"From that same Spectator piece, by Hastings himself, that you found and quoted Jim."
You have been given exactly what Hastings said - he acknowledges that the review was fair ("generous" even) yet sill you persist.
This is an indication of two things:
1. You cannot get the full picture of what a historian is saying from selected 'cut-'n-pastes - you need to read everything he wrote on the subject.
2. Your manic obsession with being "right" is an indication something serious.
The statement again:
""Hastings hates British complacency about her military past, he hates British chauvinism, he hates Britain's patronising attitudes towards her allies, he hates Britain's love of turning retreats — Corunna, Dunkirk, Mons — into moral victories, he hates her continuing penchant for 'gesture politics', and he is damned sure that he is going to leave no treasured national myth unexploded. For the officers who only arrived in France in 1915 there already seemed something heroic about the men of the BEF; but in Hastings's hands even the old saw of lions led by donkeys is turned on its head, with the VCs they win 'soft' VCs, the battles they fight 'little battles' and even Mons — the jewel in the Old Contemptibles' crown — little more than a sideshow of a sideshow.
'Dodgy' battalions in the Ypres Salient, wholesale abandonment of weapons and positions, pusillanimous leadership, a reluctant showing at the Marne, a navy that couldn't fire, politicians who knew nothing of war, it all makes for chastening reading."

Is he being hypocritical when he says it was a "generous review" - he only takes the writer up on his hatred of the military?
Is he such a poor historian that we writes contradictory statements on the same subject?

Yu couldn't explain the review other than to call it crap - how do you explain Hastings' response to it - is that "crap too"?
Replies on a plain postcard please.
This is exactly what you have done throughout all this - ignored things that have been put in front of you as if they don't exist because ithey don't suit your jingoism
You will probably ignore this and press on with your claims - which will make my point perfectly
Jim Carroll