A friend sent me details of the US Army's new weapon, the XM25 Counter Defilade Target Engagement System and how it would finally once and for all time put an end to the Taliban.

I quoted Kipling back at him. Every western soldier off to fight in the Middle East should know and remember this, because it's as true today as when it was writen.

Arithmetic on the Frontier

A great and glorious thing it is

To learn, for seven years or so,

The Lord knows what of that and this,

Ere reckoned fit to face the foe

--The flying bullet down the Pass,

That whistles clear: "All flesh is grass."

Three hundred pounds per annum spent

On making brain and body meeter

For all the murderous intent

Comprised in "villanous saltpetre!"

And after -- ask the Yusufzaies

What comes of all our 'ologies.

A scrimmage in a Border Station --

A canter down some dark defile --

Two thousand pounds of education

Drops to a ten-rupee jezail --

The Crammer's boast, the Squadron's pride,

Shot like a rabbit in a ride!

No proposition Euclid wrote,

No formulae the text-books know,

Will turn the bullet from your coat,

Or ward the tulwar's downward blow

Strike hard who cares

-- shoot straight who can --

The odds are on the cheaper man.

One sword-knot stolen from the camp

Will pay for all the school expenses

Of any Kurrum Valley scamp

Who knows no word of moods and tenses,

But, being blessed with perfect sight,

Picks off our messmates left and right.

With home-bred hordes the hillsides teem,

The troopships bring us one by one,

At vast expense of time and steam,

To slay Afridis where they run.

The "captives of our bow and spear"

Are cheap, alas! as we are dear.

Taliban? In the Middle East?

Always liked this bit from Soldier of the Queen:


When you're wounded and lying on Afghanistan's plains

And the women come out to cut up what remains

Just roll to your rifle and blow out your brains

And go to your God like a soldier.

Recollect chatting to a shopkeeper in Islamabad who asserted: "Those people are a law to themselves and don't give a damn for Islamabad or Zia!"
Another day our taxi driver flatly refused to take us north of Murree where we had noticed that a range of weapons, many captured from the Russians, were on sale in the bazaar.

$35,000 a pop for that gun? What's the betting that the locals will come up with an idea to minimise its effectiveness? Cheaper to buy them off.

"Tommy" by Rudyard Kipling (poetry reading) - YouTube

There's more than a bit of truth in his 'Pick up the White Man's Burden'.

Not just the soldiers, either. Kipling has a few harsh words for sociologists, economists, politicians, and other practitioners of the "liberal arts", in The Gods of the Copybook Headings (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gods_of_the_Copybook_Headings):
As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place;
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four —
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man —
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began: —
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

Thanks bnt, reading that gave me goosepimples !

Bill 'Awkins

"'As anybody seen Bill 'Awkins?"
"Now 'ow in the devil would I know?"
"'E's taken my girl out walkin',
An' I've got to tell 'im so --
Gawd -- bless -- 'im!
I've got to tell 'im so."

"D'yer know what 'e's like, Bill 'Awkins?"
"Now what in the devil would I care?"
"'E's the livin', breathin' image of an organ-grinder's monkey,
With a pound of grease in 'is 'air --
Gawd -- bless -- 'im!
An' a pound o' grease in 'is 'air."

"An' s'pose you met Bill 'Awkins,
Now what in the devil 'ud ye do?"
"I'd open 'is cheek to 'is chin-strap buckle,
An' bung up 'is both eyes, too --
Gawd -- bless -- 'im!
An' bung up 'is both eyes, too!"

"Look 'ere, where 'e comes, Bill 'Awkins!
Now what in the devil will you say?"
"It isn't fit an' proper to be fightin' on a Sunday,
So I'll pass 'im the time o' day --
Gawd -- bless -- 'im!
I'll pass 'im the time o' day!"

And the reality that when all foreign troops leave Afghanistan, the previous regime will move in again. If we had learnt from history, we would know that it was ever thus.

Back in 1839, the Brits got the bright idea that the Afghans needed civilizing -- and got a bloody nose. They tried a few more times. Then the Russians, then the Yanks, then NATO:ugh:

If the Pathans ever figure out how to run drones, there will be some serious settling of accounts.

My favourite bit of Kipling was as thus:

Now it is not good for the Christian's health to hustle the Aryan brown,
For the Christian riles, and the Aryan smiles and he weareth the Christian down;
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white with the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear: "A Fool lies here who tried to hustle the East."


As true now as it ever was.

Is the idea that it is better to fight "the terrorists" on their own ground rather than in the streets of our own countries a false premise?

The people killed in the London Underground while going about their normal, peaceful, everyday business were not the victims of the Taliban, nor were those who died in the Twin Towers. Almost 500 British soldiers have died in Afghanistan in this latest venture into the country by the British Army and every single one of them was a British Citizen with a life ahead of them, and in many cases, a wife and/or children left to struggle on without them.

Are they any less than we who go quietly about our business at home - still under threat from the same home-grown terrorists as before?

Just downloaded "Soldier Stories" for the Kindle. Interesting thread.

Blacksheep:

If you've read any recent history about Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, the Taliban, the Pakistani ISI, Al-Qaeda and a few assorted Afghani warlords you would note that AQ, the Taliban, Pakistan and the ISI are intimately co-joined at the hip. The Taliban, for example, fought side by side with AQ against what we in the West call the "Northern Alliance" led by Ahmad Shah Massoud. And it was Massoud who was trying to warn the West, and the U.S. specifically, that a strike against the U.S. by AQ - hosted by the Taliban - was imminent. He paid for this with his life two days before 9/11.

In essence, AQ, the Taliban, Pakistan and the ISI are intrinsically interwoven with the same goals. No matter what is publicly proclaimed to the contrary. And must be defeated. Regardless of what the huggy-fluffs would have us believe.

Yes, 500 British soldiers have given their lives in this struggle. Thousands of Americans and many hundreds of NATO allied forces have as well. To put it in perspective, these numbers pale in comparison to conflicts such as WWI and WWII. Yet we undertook to defeat the enemy on the field of battle in those two wars, regardless of the human cost.

Radical Islam is just as much a threat to our way of life as the threats posed by the two world wars. Radical Islam must be defeated and defeated soundly. Wherever on the earth it may fester.

For the couzins across the water............

An American

1894

The American Spirit speaks:
If the Led Striker call it a strike,
Or the papers call it a war,
They know not much what I am like,
Nor what he is, My Avatar.

Through many roads, by me possessed,
He shambles forth in cosmic guise;
He is the Jester and the Jest,
And he the Text himself applies.

The Celt is in his heart and hand,
The Gaul is in his brain and nerve;
Where, cosmopolitanly planned,
He guards the Redskin's dry reserve

His easy unswept hearth he lends
From Labrador to Guadeloupe;
Till, elbowed out by sloven friends,
He camps, at sufferance, on the stoop.

Calm-eyed he scoffs at Sword and Crown,
Or, panic-blinded, stabs and slays:
Blatant he bids the world bow down,
Or cringing begs a crust of praise;

Or, sombre-drunk, at mine and mart,
He dubs his dreary brethren Kings.
His hands are black with blood -- his heart
Leaps, as a babe's, at little things.

But, through the shift of mood and mood,
Mine ancient humour saves him whole --
The cynic devil in his blood
That bids him mock his hurrying soul;

That bids him flout the Law he makes,
That bids him make the Law he flouts,
Till, dazed by many doubts, he wakes
The drumming guns that -- have no doubts;

That checks him foolish-hot and fond,
That chuckles through his deepest ire,
That gilds the slough of his despond
But dims the goal of his desire;

Inopportune, shrill-accented,
The acrid Asiatic mirth
That leaves him, careless 'mid his dead,
The scandal of the elder earth.

How shall he clear himself, how reach
Your bar or weighed defence prefer --
A brother hedged with alien speech
And lacking all interpreter?

Which knowledge vexes him a space;
But, while Reproof around him rings,
He turns a keen untroubled face
Home, to the instant need of things.

Enslaved, illogical, elate,
He greets the embarrassed Gods, nor fears
To shake the iron hand of Fate
Or match with Destiny for beers.

Lo, imperturbable he rules,
Unkempt, desreputable, vast --
And, in the teeth of all the schools,
I -- I shall save him at the last!

The soldiers fighting there understand, but the pols who send them there still haven't a clue.

Just finished Kilcullen's Counterinsurgency.

Good stuff.

Going to go find Accidental Guerilla, heard it was quite good.

He posits the global jihad as an insurgency, writ large. Interesting theoretical framework, and a hell of a lot more sensible than "War on Terrorism" rhetoric.

rgbrock etc. I think the message Kipling had for the British way back when is that going to 'their' country and fighing 'them' on their own terms was a Bad Idea. It's just as true today.

Guerilla warfare doesn't work - we don't look like them, think like them or know each other like they do. Large-scale warfare doesn't work, it's like throwing a hand grenade at an anthill: some will always escape to grow a new nest.

So what do I advocate ? One solution would be to designate countries as terrorist countries and proscribe them. Don't trade with them, don't accept citizens from their country in ours (yes, that means no flights to and from), deport people from that country back there when living in ours, don't subsidise them and above all don't send journalists there to film their starving children when aid from the hated west is cut off and they sit around looking pathetic.

Cut them off, isolate them, leave them to it. Of course it would be costly, of course it would be "unfair" to their "good citizens", but to hell with it: time we started putting ourselves first.

Could it be done ? The USSR did. Has any western government today the will to do it ? Don't make me laugh.

Far easier for us to spend millions on sophisticated weaponry and millions training our soldiers to go over there and be shot with a "ten rupee jezail".

OFSO:

I respectfully disagree with you. Should the British, then, have stayed away from the Continent when the Austrian corporal was running amok?

Anti-guerrilla warfare can indeed work. We can think similar to those we're fighting against and we can certainly look like them.

http://www.darkhorizons.com/assets/0007/9641/afghan_article.jpg?1246091970

Look like a bunch of Taliban on horseback, no? In actuality they are American Special Forces who rode with the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan against the Taliban in October 2001.

Should the British, then, have stayed away from the Continent when the Austrian corporal was running amok?

To be cynical, the Germans are still running the eurozone etc. today and I don't think things in 2012 would be much different had the Germans won WWII sixty years ago except we'd have a lot less problems in Certain Areas.

OK, in all humanity, you are right.

But as with all things: you get what you pay for and what you are prepared to do.

Should be obvious, no Davaar? It's not like the German Luftwaffe didn't try bombing Britain to kingdom come.

Ah, rg, but not obvious to me. Still, if it is all that obvious you will have no trouble in keeping me right. The war began on September 3, 1939. Was there not some mention of Poland? When was it, again, that the Luftwaffe laid on the London blitz? What happened to Poland in 1945?

PS. The front page of the International Express of 12-18 June, 2012 ("56 Pages of News from Britain") reads "WE MUST STOP GERMANY NOW, Fury erupts over their plans for EU takeover". Uhuh! Was Dr Merkel a corporal too?

Here's my local memorial to our country's less than happy experience of Afghanistan

http://i91.photobucket.com/albums/k288/loki_021/forafrica/maiwand2.jpg

The Maiwand Lion in the Forbury Gardens, Reading. It commemorates the defeat of the 66th Regiment of Foot by a vastly more numerous, Russian trained Afghan formation.....should be a reminder to us all.

Trivia factoid approaching: Arther Conan Doyle based Dr Watson on the medical officer of this regiment who was wounded in the action.

And when they have read Kipling they may want to dip into Theodor Fontane (1859) ("Das Trauerspiel von Afghanistan"), the sorry tale of Elphinstone's doomed force in 1841 of whom one survived out of thousands. Would have done better to stay at home:

"Die hören sollen, sie hören nicht mehr,
Vernichtet ist das ganze Heer,
Mit dreizehntausend der Zug begann,
Einer kam heim aus Afghanistan."

("With THIRTEEN THOUSAND the group [train] began, but ONE came home from Afghanistan"; my own poor effort at free translation).

Die hören sollen, sie hören nicht mehr,
Those that should hear, they hear no more,
Vernichtet ist das ganze Heer,
Gone is the entire army,
Mit dreizehntausend der Zug begann,
With 13,000 the trip began,
Einer kam heim aus Afghanistan.
One came home from Afghanistan

Brave men, incompetent leadership. Elphinstone should have been shot.

Apologies for cross posting this from another thread, but it seems to me that the real battlefield is at home. Those whose agenda is to take over and change our western culture and way of life are here now, and working successfully towards their aim.

The situation in Egypt whilst different in many respects, gives a good indication of what could just possibly happen here.

Imagine a UK general election in say 2030 ... general apathy & total disillusion with the mainstream parties ... those native voters who could be bothered to vote, do so for the Greens, the 'New Liberals', the Monster raving loonies Mk II, the 'Put Britain back in the EU' party, the Home rule for England party, and the British Americans for a 53rd State party.
Meanwhile there has been a block vote by every Muslim, and the 'New UK Muslim Brothers' have won a huge majority... they are forming a government with an Islamic republic as their aim.
Either apathy will become absolute and veils & beards the new must have fashion ... or civil war will break out.
I can only hope that if this nightmarish fantasy of mine actually happened, the Army (assuming it still existed!) would take over as in Egypt.

Elphinstone should have been shot.

Yes. I rather think he was. Or worse.

I can only hope that if this nightmarish fantasy of mine actually happened, the Army (assuming it still existed!) would take over as in Egypt.


I fear it is more than a phantasy. Still, by then one will be dead.

Elphinstone died in captivity. Too good for him.

Elphinstone died in captivity. Too good for him

Yes again. Thanks.

Who was it that compared the British troops to "Lions
being led by donkeys?"

Stormin:

I'm quite sure that could be said about any army. Just as there are jerkoffs in the enlisted ranks, there are jerkoffs in the officer corps as well. Conversely just as not everyone in the enlisted ranks are jerkoffs, not everyone in the officer corps are jerkoffs either.

Dr. Mahathir Mohammad, former prime minister of Malaysia put it rather well, way back in the nineties.

"Beware of who you call terrorists. In the end you have to talk to them. One day you may well have to welcome one or two of them with a full State Visit."

The Viet Cong are doing well enough. The Israelis got their country. The ANC rule S.Africa. Jomo Kenyatta became President of Kenya. IRA leaders sit in Stormont. They were all terrorists once and there are plenty of other examples.

The men who flew those aircraft into the WTC weren't Afghan fighters, they were Saudi dissidents, incensed by US support of their corrupt (and undemocratic) ruling elite. Muslim extremists? Don't make me laugh! Several of them spent their last night on earth at a lap-dancing bar. :rolleyes:

The men who carried out the suicide bombings in London were third generation migrants afflicted with anomie, unable to reconcile themselves with either British culture or that of their parents. Iraq and Saddam Hussein had nothing at all to do with Al Qaeda: what was the reason for the horror that has overcome the Iraqi people? We shall never know for certain. We've certainly made a lot more enemies in Iraq and Afghanistan than there were before we interfered.

I must have just met the wrong ones I suppose rgbrock.

You are, of course, correct in what you say.

Stormin':

I served under some of the worst "leaders" I could have imagined. Ones who couldn't find their asses with both hands, even with an instruction manual.

On the other hand, I have served under leaders who inspired the very best in their troops.
The kind of leaders who you would whole-heartedly march into battle with, without hesitation.

Blacksheep wrote:

The men who flew those aircraft into the WTC weren't Afghan fighters, they were Saudi dissidents

Correct. However, those same Saudi dissidents were trained in camps located in Afghanistan. Supported by the Taliban, Pakistan, AQ and the Pakistani ISI.

And you are also correct in stating that Iraq and Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11 as they didn't. Nor did they have weapons of mass destruction.

There is no talking with Islamic fundamentalists who are bent on destroying the west and hoisting, yet again, a caliphate over all lands. There is no talking to people who value life so little that they are prepared to blow their own asses up in order to achieve "martyrdom". If there is no value of life to these type of people then we should endeavor to the best of our ability to help them along in their quest.

The kind of leaders who you would whole-heartedly march into battle with, without hesitation.


Is that a virtue in all cases? That in World War 1, from which we have the "donkey" quip, was exactly what killed so many of the led. The leaders were the donkeys; the led were the lions.

As to WW2 and "meet them in any army", that is no doubt true in part, as of all human organisations. On the other hand Lord Alanbrooke's War Diaries mention a remark by Churchill, a propos Montgomery, that at long last we had found a general who could win a battle, and he had to turn out a bounder.

The Viet Cong are doing well enough.

The VC were sacrificed by the NVA during 1967 and 1968 for a concrete, albeit cynical, political aim.
Try a deeper reading of the history of the Viet Nam conflict.
The VC (mostly Southerners) didn't win that war, the Northerners did.

The cost, in WW1, of trench warfare and the willingness of generals to send thousands upon thousands to their almost certain deaths with little prospect for meaningful gain, tactical or strategic, has boggled my mind since I began my military career.

Why did they do it, and why did the men continue to obey? Was this inheritance and inbreeding, manifest in the officer corps, at its ultimate end?

I think it was utter travesty and malfeasance, along with vital trust misplaced, and the best reason why no American unit should ever serve at the command of a Brit.

BandAide wrote:

Why did they do it, and why did the men continue to obey?

Because as a soldier you are trained to obey orders. To do otherwise invites a world of hurt descending upon your ass.

Also, I don't think WWI had the only claim of masses being led to certain death.
The landings at Normandy during WWII share in this as well as the Battle of Pork Chop Hill in the Korean conflict, undertaken by the US Army's 7th Infantry Division.

And then there was a more recent battle led by US Special Forces (the ones who wear green berets) in Afghanistan who assaulted a Taliban fortress up hill in mountainous, and hostile, terrain. Although air assets helped in subduing the fortress inhabitants, the Special Forces element had to withdraw after taking severe casualties.

Military history contains copious amounts of tales with men being led into either a slaughter or on a mission with no possibillity of a favorable outcome.
These missions are usually, but not always, concocted by jack asses.

This is all very informative. Wikipedia traces the origin of the "donkeys" assessment to a letter sent home by a British soldier in the Crimean War, quoting a Russian officer that the Brits were "lions led by asses".

I am happy that I was not there in WW1. I would probably have fallen short of the "lion" standard. At one time I would have been pro-war against the rotten Boche, etc., but as the years go by I come more and more to sympathise with the anti-war lot. Note, I do not equate them with "pacifist".

In "The General", C S Forester gives a fascinating insight into the governing military mind of the day.

An old church in Quebec City has a wall plaque to comemmorate a young officer of the Canadian Machine-Gun Corps, killed in the very last days of 1918. It carries a verse:

"These gave,
In the glorious morning of their days,
For Empire's sake,
All but Empire's praise"

I can scarcely conceive of a more vapid reason. I see no difference between that and "Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuehrer". What is the difference?

An old church in Quebec City has a wall plaque to comemmorate a young officer of the Canadian Machine-Gun Corps, killed in the very last days of 1918. It carries a verse:

"These gave,
In the glorious morning of their days,
For Empire's sake,
All but Empire's praise"

I can scarcely conceive of a more vapid reason. I see no difference between that and "Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuehrer". What is the difference?

Obviously, there is no difference, as all Canadians are Nazis. :p
That which you cannot see is not necessarily not there. Try on a different pair of glasses, perhaps?

I think and hope the pervading ethic has evolved to duty to the mission rather than duty to the order. Suicidal charges with no prospect of achieving anything proximate to cost should never have been conducted. Period.

D-day was altogether different. It was not suicidal or hopeless in its objective. Both charges were noble, one was foreseeably futile, the other was hope against fate.

Early WWII bomber crews were the same. They had potential results in their sights. Over the top walking charges out of the trenches into machine gun fire were only men doing their duty as they saw it, expecting to die.

Try on a different pair of glasses, perhaps?

Deep thinking, Lonewolf. Let's try another contrast: "Gott mit uns" vs "O God our help in Ages past!".

Last time I did ask what is the difference between the mantras, to which you are coyly silent.

Davaar:

Not sure why you are pressing the equivalency issue, since a people are a bit more than their throwaway bumper sticker adages, from where I sit.

Go fish, and wear the sunglasses to keep from squinting. :cool:

Obviously, there is no difference, as all Canadians are Nazis.

That is your suggestion, not mine. Then again, I do not know where you come by the notion that there were any Nazis at all in Canada, or even in Germany, in 1918.

The International Express of 12-18 June, 2012 ('56 Pages of News From Britain") carries the banner headline "WE MUST STOP GERMANY NOW", (Gracious me! A British Journal!) and continues "Fury erupts over their plans for EU takeover". Really?

Is that "For Empire's Sake", or its variant "One King, One Flag, One Empire" or for the English National Anthem "Wider Still and Wider, May Thy Bounds Be Set; God Who made Thee Mighty, Make Thee Mightier Yet!".

Or one self-interest against another?

Tut-Tut, Davaar! :=

Its the British National Anthem.

One state four nations and all that. . . :confused:

That quote was from Land of Hope and Glory, rather than God Save Brenda.

That quote was from Land of Hope and Glory, rather than God Save Brenda. True, so not for "Empire's sake", but perhaps for the second verse which goes:

O Lord our God arise,
Scatter her enemies
And make them fall;
Confound their politics,
Frustrate their knavish tricks,
On Thee our hopes we fix,
God save us all!

mutter, mutter, "rebellious Scots", mutter, mutter . . . . :*

Then again, I do not know where you come by the notion that there were any Nazis at all in Canada, or even in Germany, in 1918.

Depends how closely you tie the Völkisch movement (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%B6lkisch_movement) to Nazism.

Brothers Beyond the Sea: National Socialism in Canada (http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Brothers_Beyond_the_Sea.html?id=iVOPmoWd4R0C)

Chapter 1, pages 14-20 refer.

How we do wander. We began with Kipling, of whom I was once a great admirer. I am still a great admirer, but.

The “but” puts him with Newbolt and Vitae Lampada (“The voice of a schoolboy rallies the men, Play up! Play up! And play the game!”). Yeah, p*ss off, mate.

Kipling’s works are all very jolly, even about poor Danny Deever; but not so jolly when it came to his boy in the Irish Guards. "Has anyone heard of my boy Jack? Not this tide". And that horrible “Mary Postgate”, and then his very own “If any question why we died, tell them, Because our fathers lied”. Right on! He wrote it, and he was himself one of the prime liars.

It appears I am an “equivalencer”, whatever that may be. Okay, then, a few questions and answers:

Question: Who said: “I’d run like Hell to help Hitler, if I was a Hun”?
Answer: Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill.
Question: When?
Answer: April 20, 1944.
Question: Says who?
Answer: John Colville, “The Fringes of Power” (Downing
Street Diaries, Volume Two), Sceptre Press, 1987.
Question: Who summed Hitler up as “History’s saddest might-have- been?
Answer: Sir Alan P Herbert, MP.

Britain declared war on Germany in early September, 1939, because of the invasion of Poland. The British guarantee was one it had no hope of making good, and never did make good. How then could Britain declare the war because an Austrian corporal was running amok in Europe? Or, as suggested above, bombing London (“Blitz”, First edition) months later, in Summer 1940?

With heavy heart I differ from Blacksheep. No doubt it happens, but I have never seen or heard that vile “Land of Hope and Glory” sung in Scotland. Is it ever sung there? I do not look on it as any but an English national anthem. I chose my words deliberately. Its natural habitat is the annual conclusion of the Proms, beloved of the English.

And then, as I quoted earlier, we now have the International Express of 12-18 June, 2012, with “We Must Stop Germany Now”. Who is the Austrian corporal now? I was in England when the decision was made to go into the ECM, and the rationale was that “we” would not only join, but “we” would run it too. What became of that?

As to that memorial plaque in the church at Quebec City, I first saw it in 1966, and it has remained with me ever since. A young man, barely, as I recall, into his twenties, was shredded to bits in Flanders.

Why? “For Empire’s Praise”, Not “For freedom”; not “To preserve the sanctity of home and hearth”; not “To protect Mother, Wife, and Child”; not for any of these. In case we miss the point, the quatrain emphasises that he gave up everything for Empire’s Praise. Hope he found it worthwhile, but then he was dead and had no say in the plaque.

Someone draws the analogy, intended perhaps as witty, that all Canadians are Nazis. I am referred to a handful of books on Canadian demography and politics; but there were NO Nazis anywhere in 1918; so to what point relevant to the young dead lieutenant in the Canadian Machine-Gun Corps am I invited to those books? In any case, ask the poster who introduced the Nazis, don't ask me.

Incidentally, or not incidentally, where is the Empire today, apart from the Proms? How goes the wider still and wider?

Davaar, you raised the Nazi by raising their leader, and one of his favorite aphorisms.
"Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer!"
(One people, one empire, one leader!)

I offer you your own words. I sarcastically responded to your moral equivalence attempt at the mourning of the dead in service to empire, captured in the verse your provided, and the blatant political jingoism of the Third Reich's leadership.

I guess it's all the same to you -- I see no difference between -- in your own words, so "equivalence" is a valid description of the game in play.

Cheers. Welcome to the wonderful world of M. Godwin, and his legacy.

LW_50
In "The General", C S Forester gives a fascinating insight into the governing military mind of the day.

An old church in Quebec City has a wall plaque to comemmorate a young officer of the Canadian Machine-Gun Corps, killed in the very last days of 1918. It carries a verse:

"These gave,
In the glorious morning of their days,
For Empire's sake,
All but Empire's praise"

I can scarcely conceive of a more vapid reason. I see no difference between that and "Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuehrer". What is the difference?

God heard the embattled nations sing and shout
"Gott strafe England" and "God save the King!"
God this, God that, and God the other thing –
"Good God!" said God, "I've got my work cut out!"

JC Squire (1916)

the blatant political jingoism of the Third Reich's leadership.


Ah Yes! Jingoism. The Third Reich, you say?

"We don't want to fight,
But, By Jingo!, If we do,
We've got the ships, We've got the men,
We've got the money too".

English music-hall song of 1877-1878, time of Russo-Turkish war.

Teeteringhead. Exactly.