{"id":67710,"date":"2006-07-02T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2006-07-02T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/2006\/07\/02\/good-bye-to-all-that\/"},"modified":"2006-07-02T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2006-07-02T00:00:00","slug":"good-bye-to-all-that","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/2006\/07\/02\/good-bye-to-all-that\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cGood bye to all that…<\/em>\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Les Britanniques ont f\u00eat\u00e9 le 90\u00e8me anniversaire de la bataille de la Somme, commenc\u00e9e le 1er juillet 1916. On conna\u00eet les circonstances de cette bataille, qui fut le plus grand carnage, et le plus inutile au vu des r\u00e9sultats obtenus, de l’histoire militaire du Royaume-Uni.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tPour autant, ce temps-l\u00e0 ne m\u00e9rite pas toutes les condamnations dont on l’a souvent charg\u00e9. Il n’est pas s\u00fbr que les vertus humaines fussent, du temps de la bataille de la Somme, moins hautes que les n\u00f4tres, dans un temps o\u00f9 l’on a appris \u00e0 \u00e9viter les carnages pour soi (l’Occident), pour les r\u00e9server aux autres.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tCette chronique<\/a> de l’\u00e9crivain et historien Geoffrey Wheatcroft, dans l’International Herald Tribune<\/em>, nous \u00e9claire bien \u00e0 ce propos. Elle mesure combien la r\u00e9duction du carnage chez nous est directement proportionnelle \u00e0 l’augmentation de la l\u00e2chet\u00e9 et de la m\u00e9diocrit\u00e9.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00ab A draft was introduced in the course of that war, more for political than military reasons, but the millions who joined up in the first two years did so freely. They were inspired by patriotism, by anger at the ruthless German violation of Belgian neutrality, and, in the case of the men from the higher classes, by a sense of private honor, in Evelyn Waugh’s words, of a debt on demand that had been incurred by privilege.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bb Those young idealists originally believed that the war would be over soon, but also that it was fine and noble thing. Now God be thanked Who has matched us with His hour, wrote the poet Rupert Brooke shortly before his death.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bb After the war, a myth grew up that callous or even cowardly officers drove men to their deaths. In fact, junior officers were three times more likely to be killed than private soldiers, not because they were braver but because they were expected to set an example and, in an only half-ironical phrase, to go ahead and get shot first. Not only subalterns: On that first day on the Somme, 30 British officers of the rank of lieutenant-colonel or above were killed.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bb Equality of sacrifice is sometimes a convenient phrase, but no one could deny it then. When the war began, the prime minister was the Liberal, H.H. Asquith, and the Tory leader of the opposition was Andrew Bonar Law. Both would lose sons in action. Lord Salisbury was an earlier prime minister; five of his grandsons were killed. And several younger Members of Parliament, including William Gladstone, grandson of one more prime minister, joined up and were killed.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bb All that is a sharp contrast with a Blair government, not one of whom has ever performed any kind of military service, and a Bush administration whose senior members have never been much burdened by any sense of private honor incurred by privilege. Like Dick Cheney, they had other priorities when they should have been drafted.<\/em> \u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\tMis en ligne le 2 juillet 2006 \u00e0 15H27<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Les Britanniques ont f\u00eat\u00e9 le 90\u00e8me anniversaire de la bataille de la Somme, commenc\u00e9e le 1er juillet 1916. On conna\u00eet les circonstances de cette bataille, qui fut le plus grand carnage, et le plus inutile au vu des r\u00e9sultats obtenus, de l’histoire militaire du Royaume-Uni. Pour autant, ce temps-l\u00e0 ne m\u00e9rite pas toutes les condamnations… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5572,1294,2891,2645,3165,5574,5571,5573],"class_list":["post-67710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bloc-notes","tag-anglais","tag-cheney","tag-grande","tag-guerre","tag-heroisme","tag-sacrifice","tag-somme","tag-wheatcroft"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67710\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}