World War I Centenary: Let the Spin Begin
I didn’t expect to find myself agreeing with Labour’s Shadow Education Secretary Tristram Hunt, but take a gander at his article “Bashing History,” and see what you think.
We’re going to be reading a lot of silly nonsense about World War I in the next year or two, and Hunt’s preemptive strike is a salutary warning.
His piece recalls a poetic answer to Eric Bogle’s famous poem “Willie McBride,” written by Stephen Suffet in 1997:
Ask the people of Belgium or Alsace-Lorraine,
If my life was wasted, if I died in vain.
I think they will tell you when all’s said and done,
They welcomed this boy with his tin hat and gun.
For the text of both poems, click here.
2 thoughts on “World War I Centenary: Let the Spin Begin”
Thanks. I agree with both your sentiments.
I actually admire Eric Bogle’s “No Man’s Land,” also known as “The Green Fields of France,” and I sympathize with Bogle’s antiwar message. Nevertheless, I wrote “Willie McBride’s Reply” to show that there was another side of the story, and to give voice to the countless young men (and some women) who served in the Great War because they honestly believed the Allied cause was honorable and just. Whether history proved them right is entirely another matter.