Righty ho. -- FCS Discussion Forum

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Subject: Righty ho.

Author:
Ed Harris (Venezia)

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Date Posted: 16:20:48 12/17/04 Fri
In reply to: Lachie Munro 's message, "Lest we forget" on 15:50:39 12/17/04 Fri

I think that it was Lenin, wasn't it, who insisted that the Great War was a war between the industrial classes for raw materials and markets and that the "working class" soliders were their unwitting dupes. Perhaps in Russia and Germany this may have an element of truth, but in Britain, the Dominions and the Unites States - democracies every one - this is a bit fanciful, or at the very least over simplistic. Samuel Johnson was not far wrong when he pointed out that British patriotism is in fact an invention of the lower classes, and not the Europeanised aristocracy with all their Grand Tours, French wine, Italian tailoring, and German wives.

As for the disproportionate contribution of Scots, this has been true of every conflict since the seige of Havannah in 1759. I am not a Scot, but one does get the impression that most Scots (that's ordinary Scots, not the Anglicised gentry) take great pride in Scotland's military record. I imagine that many would be insulted at the suggestion that the only reason for their pride is that they have been brainwashed by an English bourgeois conspiracy to make the Scottish Proletariat into canon-fodder for England's capitalist-imperialist foreign policy.

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[> [> [> Subject: It has historic reason

Author:
anon
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Date Posted: 16:51:35 12/17/04 Fri

"they have been brainwashed by an English bourgeois conspiracy to make the Scottish Proletariat into canon-fodder for England's capitalist-imperialist foreign policy."

General Wolfe "No big mischief if they [Scottish soldiers] fall... what better way of dealing with your secret enemy"

Peel said much the same.

The Scottish economy has been run down, and the empire needed soldiers. It both helped the empire, and killed off the "secret enemy".

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