"" I was dismayed that he should think I 'hate' the British army. On the contrary,""
That is not dismissing the review - it was disagreeing with his conclusions of what he wrote which was
"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."
All fully accepted as "generous"
Your manic attempts to dismiss this from your own historian are jingoism in the extreme.
Sorry 'bout that Keith - that's what the man said and you damn well know it.
"Secondly, there was no sign of that subservience just before the war."
WHAT
Two years before the war broke out the Titanic sank and the steerage passengers were locked below-decks until the wealthier passengers were able to escape.
Britain was a sharply divided society with subservience to "your btters" was taught in schools and preached in churches.
For an overview of the class divisions and subservience expected see - 'The Deferential Worker', by Howard Newby
It is equally insane to suggest that our politicians then were any less corrupt then than they are now - the only difference was that corruption and privilege was a built in feature of society, where now, they have to work a little harder to milk us dry.
'The good of the country' was the protection of a class divided society - nothing to do with the good of the people as a whole, who were there when they were needed to make money and fight wars.
Politics was a calling for the privileged pretty much as the Church was - if they failed to make the church, they went into politics.
To put down the atrocious nature of WW1 to "that's the way it was in those days" - and attitude that would let the horrors of the inquisition and the horrors of the Reformation - it was like that because all of these things were barbaric displays of privilege - whether in protection of the Church or protection of the Empire - primitive power struggles that slaughtered many millions
Jim Carroll