Jeremy Corbyn has divided the nation on many of his domestic policies, including more public ownership and an end to austerity.

But I believe that on foreign affairs he happens to be in tune with a steady but significant change in public opinion.

For many years, even centuries, the British were regarded as a warlike race with soldiers that were both fearless and fearsome.

Their heroes were men like Lord Nelson, who died amid his great naval battle success at Trafalgar, and the Duke of Wellington, whose victory at Waterloo was 200 years ago.

Before the battle Wellington is reputed to have said of his own troops “This army is composed of the scum of the earth. I don’t know what effect these men will have on the enemy, but by God they terrify me!”

But even the man called the Iron Duke by his troops wept when he learned of the numbers of soldiers slaughtered that day. There were 15,000 British deaths and the French lost 40,000.

Huge numbers of young men volunteered to fight for their country a century later during the First World War. But conscription had to be introduced to keep up numbers and for the first time doubts were raised as to whether the victory justified the immense number of casualties.

Hitler’s Germany was regarded by most Britons as an evil to be conquered but there were heavy civilian casualties even in coastal resorts such as Brighton and Eastbourne.

Churchill was depicted as a war hero but not to millions of servicemen who voted him out in the 1945 general election.

Several wars became unpopular in the 1950s and 1960s – the Suez conflict for Britain and Vietnam for the USA.

Even the occasional patriotic surge such as that boosting Margaret Thatcher in the Falklands war of 1982 could not quell growing public scepticism.

This reached a new peak with Tony Blair’s Iraq invasion with the USA, which prompted a march of two million people in protest. Public opinion had started equally divided over the war but finished with few in favour. The many good things Tony Blair achieved in government have been obliterated by Iraq.

His name is so toxic among Labour supporters, despite his three election victories, that his intervention in the leadership vote helped Corbyn to be elected.

There has been a broad level of consensus between the main parties for years over defence. But Corbyn is essentially a pacifist. He does not see a future for Britain in NATO and he will refuse to back replacing the Trident nuclear capability when a decision has to be made about that next year.

These views, once regarded as dangerous and deluded, are now mainstream in radical places such as Brighton and Hove. I suspect they command high levels of support even in true blue parts of rural Sussex. Much more sanctity is placed these days on human life. The number of British soldiers killed during the whole Afghan campaign was equal to that which war leaders like Churchill would see slaughtered in one day.

I cannot see an appetite for war any more in this country and if an unpopular conflict started, many people would simply refuse to take part.

Some Conservatives like to portray Corbyn as a peace freak whose views are shared by a tiny minority – a man who could never win a general election.

But if David Cameron started that unpopular war, the unthinkable could easily happen.

The Argus:  W G Grace

The 100th anniversary of W G Grace’s death reminded me of how many men were once known by their initials. Chesterton was so well known that his newspaper was called G K’s Weekly.

There were poets such as W H Auden, comic writers like P G Wodehouse and politicians like H H Asquith. Sometimes it was hard to know what the initials stood for.

When I started working for newspapers they all had a policy of using first names rather than initials but finding them out could be hard work. I asked a luminary in the Brighton Chamber of Commerce what his first name was. “H W M,” he replied. “No, your first name,” I said. The answer was H.

He may have wanted to hide an unfashionable name such as Horace but more likely he was following convention. Few people now use initials and if they do it is often for showing off, such as in the restaurant critic A A Gill or the Harry Potter author J K Rowling.

Meanwhile, a good quiz question is to ask what some of the initials stand for such as the S in W S Gilbert or in T S Eliot. One of the hardest is the S in US President Harry S Truman. Oddly it stands for nothing at all. Even Horace would be better than that.