"Gentlemanly" warfare. Flickr\/Frans de Wit. Some rights reserved.<\/i><\/p>\n
Last year\u2019s commemorations of the First World War
\nwere largely predictable. Politicians \u201ccoming together\u201d to honour the
\nsacrifices of those who fought; misrepresentation of the war\u2019s causes;
\ndissenting voices disgusted by the sanitisation of history; even a
\npetty dispute over which party leaders could add a
\npersonal message to their wreaths.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
There is scarcely anything more political than a
\nnation remembering war. For those in power, commemoration is an opportunity to
\nobscure divisions like class and gender beneath a narrative of unity, to
\nvalorise history\u2019s \u201cGreat (white) Men\u201d, and to remind citizens of the need to
\nremain vigilant and fearful in the face of lingering threats to their democracy
\nand liberty. The pageantry and mythology also distracts us from the very real
\nand current links between weapons manufacturers, elected representatives and
\npublic institutions \u2013 which have long historical
\nlineages. As Paul Rogers powerfully
\nwrote, we see the spectacular poppy display, but not the
\nwar-makers who stand behind it. <\/p>\n
In this sense, it is not surprising that many of us
\nfeel uncomfortable seeing our Prime Minister in one breath solemnly declare
\n\u201cLest We Forget\u201d and in the next
\ndefend \u201clegitimate\u201d arms sales to our autocratic
\n\u201callies.\u201d To a large extent we\u2019re used to such moral hypocrisy, and
\nwell-acquainted with the cynical use of phrases like \u201chonour\u201d and \u201csacrifice\u201d
\nto describe mechanised and impersonal killing. It takes a great deal of
\nimagination and distortion to make the First World War \u201chonourable\u201d, and we
\noften see right through it.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Waterloo, however, was very different from the wars
\nof the 20th Century. The battlefield was decorated with bayonets,
\nlinear formations and Crown
\nPrinces (unfortunately, if you want a fuller picture, the
\nbicentenary re-enactment is sold out).
\n\u00a0It was a decisive battle \u2013 not an
\ninch-by-inch struggle \u2013 fought in line with old aristocratic codes: Wellington
\neven had a chance to kill Napoleon but ordered his men to hold
\nfire.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cTotal War\u201d had not arrived in Europe. Young men Jane Waterloo, which led to the \u201cConcert of Europe\u201d and No wonder, also, that our aristocratic Chancellor (who, George Orwell\u2019s 1941 essay, England Above all, what Orwell documented was the remarkable The disasters are well-known: \u201cappeasement,\u201d Looking at this record, Orwell quipped: \u201cProbably It is undoubtedly impressive that Britain emerged Those involved in the break-up of empire have The lessons from these \u201ccounter-insurgency As we look at the continuing calamity in Iraq, it is Now, we\u2019re also having to face up to a devastating Waterloo, then, might have been, in "Gentlemanly" warfare. Flickr\/Frans de Wit. Some rights reserved. Last year\u2019s commemorations of the First World War were largely predictable. Politicians \u201ccoming together\u201d to honour the sacrifices of those who fought; misrepresentation of the war\u2019s causes; dissenting voices disgusted by the sanitisation of history; even a petty dispute over which party leaders could add a personal…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1371\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nwere not conscripted en masse <\/em>to
\nfight Napoleon \u2013 though many
\nwere \u201cpress-ganged\u201d into the navy \u2013 and multilingual,
\n\u201cgentlemanly\u201d officers in the King\u2019s German Legion led a
\nprofessional and efficient campaign. War is never clean,
\nand Waterloo was undoubtedly brutal. But it did not engulf society in the same
\nway as from 1914 to 1945. Eric Hobsbawm captured
\nthe contrast well (see page 15):<\/p>\n
\nAusten wrote her novels during the Napoleonic wars, but no reader who did not
\nknow this already would guess it, for the wars do not appear in her pages, even
\nthough a number of the young gentlemen who pass through them undoubtedly took
\npart in them. It is inconceivable that any novelist could write about Britain
\nin the twentieth-century wars in this manner.<\/em><\/i><\/p>\n
\ncemented British hegemony, was not only an elite affair, but an elite triumph. No
\nwonder so many have believed the phrase (probably
\nfalsely) attributed to the Duke of Wellington claiming that
\n\u201cthe Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton.\u201d <\/p>\n
\nfor the sake of accuracy is not actually an Etonian) was so
\nkeen to \u201cmake sure the site of the Battle of Waterloo is
\nrestored in time for the 200th anniversary\u201d in order to \u201ccelebrate a great
\nvictory of coalition forces over a discredited former regime that had
\nimpoverished millions.\u201d<\/p>\n\u2026\u201cBut
\nthe opening battles of all subsequent wars have been lost there\u201d<\/strong><\/h2>\n
\nYour England<\/em>, began with the famous line: \u201cAs I
\nwrite, highly civilised human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me.\u201d
\nIn his lifetime, he had seen Europe\u2019s self-destruction and the unravelling of
\nits great confidence in peace and progress after the Napoleonic Wars. He \u2013 and
\nso many others \u2013 had seen modern<\/em>
\nwarfare: machine guns, tanks, carpet bombing, mass conscription, poison gas. He
\nalso saw \u2013 and indeed physically
\nfought against \u2013 the rise of Fascism; while his fellow
\nsocialists saw (or, in many cases, denied and apologised for) the extraordinary
\nbrutality of Stalinism. <\/p>\n
\nincapacity of Britain\u2019s \u201cruling class\u201d to grasp the changing nature of war and
\nsociety. \u201cThe higher commanders\u201d, he noted, \u201cdrawn from the aristocracy, could
\nnever prepare for modern war, because in order to do so they would have had to
\nadmit to themselves that the world was changing.\u201d Not to mention how the
\nChamberlains, Hoares, and Simons \u201cdealt with Fascism as the cavalry generals of
\n1914 dealt with the machine-guns \u2013 by ignoring it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nGallipoli, the Somme. We may justifiably regard Churchill \u2013 an aristocrat who
\ndid not go to university \u2013 as a great wartime leader, but he too had his share
\nof embarrassments: Gallipoli, of course, but also the terrible
\ndecision to put Britain back on the Gold Standard in 1925
\nand his praise
\nfor Mussolini\u2019s \u201cvictorious struggle\u201d against Bolshevism in 1927.<\/p>\n
\nthe battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eton, but the opening
\nbattles of all subsequent wars have been lost there.\u201d<\/p>\n\u201cAn
\nact of statesmanship\u201d<\/strong><\/h2>\n
\nfrom the \u201cAge
\nof Catastrophe\u201d intact, thanks in no small part to the
\nmasses of poor men and women deceived and manipulated by their \u201csuperiors.\u201d But
\nif our political leaders of the 1920s and 1930s were unable to understand the
\ncurrents of change spreading through Europe, they have since, if anything,
\nshown an even more dangerous level of incompetence. <\/p>\n
\nillustrated this clearly: from the 8000 Malayan guerrillas who immobilised
\n140 000 British soldiers and policemen from 1948-1960;
\nto the ill-armed Mau Mau fighters in Kenya who were only suppressed through a \u201cgulag\u201d
\nof concentration camps; to the Irish Republicans who terrorised the SAS
\nin South Armagh.<\/p>\n
\ncampaigns\u201d were then applied to Iraq, where the \u201cBritish
\nmodel\u201d (which is supposedly based on \u201cminimum force\u201d and
\n\u201cwinning hearts and minds\u201d) was constantly discussed by generals, academics and
\npolicymakers. In fact, the real \u201clessons\u201d could have been learned from
\nBritain\u2019s 1917
\noccupation of Iraq: a quick military victory followed by a
\nprotracted insurgency; a promise that \u201cwe come as liberators, not conquerors\u201d;
\nand a horribly na\u00efve expectation that \u201cwe shall be received with cordiality.\u201d<\/p>\n
\ndifficult not to see our current crop of rulers in the same way Orwell did 74
\nyears ago: delusional, archaic, inept.<\/p>\n
\nhumanitarian crisis on the edge of \u201cFortress Europe\u201d, one which has forced our
\ncurrent Etonian Prime Minister to defend \u201cregime
\nchange\u201d in militia-ridden Libya. As the Daily Mash<\/em> \u2013 satirical news that is
\noften scarily close to reality \u2013 <\/em>put
\nit:
\n\u201cDavid Cameron has insisted bombing Libya and then forgetting about it was an
\nact of statesmanship.\u201d <\/p>\n
\nWellington\u2019s words, the <\/strong>\u201cnearest run thing you ever saw in your life,\u201d but it\u2019s no surprise that
\nthe Camerons and Osbornes are so desperate to remember it. For Britain\u2019s ruling
\nelite, it was a rare success to be followed by a long record of bloody and costly
\nfailure.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"