It may only have been British propaganda about the war and winning that kept the British Empire from crumbling and falling apart immediately after the war's end. It would have been completely understandable if there had been a revolution in England following the war, once it became apparent to even the causal observer that so many British lives had been so callously wasted by the generals. That so many men had died and more had been maimed for the rest of their lives because of a war that had been fought for reasons bordering on sheer insanity and which had itself been waged with criminal stupidity.
But lessons fade over time. If they hadn't, then maybe our own nation would have been more skeptical when our own government began pounding the drums of war over a dozen years ago. Maybe the British themselves would have been more skeptical when their government, at times, took the lead in fabricating the rationale for war.
(H/T)
The insanity behind the war was simply nationalism. World-wide, nationalism is growing again. In the United States, the English-only movement is an example of that, along with the growing hatred of Muslims and immigrants. And who's pounding those drums? Who's marching to their beat?
ReplyDelete"so many British lives had been so callously wasted by the generals"
ReplyDeleteI'd rather blame the politicians. The Gallipolli fiasco was driven very much by politicians, for example.