Pat Barker's "The Ghost Road".

Themes of The Ghost Road, by Pat Barker Exploitation Britain (Western Europe in general) was a society of exploitation. Barker appears to be saying that any society that allows the inequalities of early 20th Century Britain, while thinking itself completely fair and civilised, is sick at heart - bad things will happen to people, whether on the scale of the war horrors or just the individual evilness of abusing a child. The lies at the …

…a society of inequality and exploitation made worse by the false idea that Europe is a civilised and caring society - this is plainly a lie. It is the sort of false society that helps create the horrors of World War One and it is a society that is irrevocably changed by these horrors. Barker's final question could be 'has society actually improved in the last 100 years - has social exploitation been wiped out?'