I know of no nation that can or should feel more righteous than another:

England: Where to start, where to start.... With the Highland Clearances? The removal of the Acadians? The Irish Question? The Triangle Trade? India? Cecil Rhodes? The Opium Wars? Being against slavery but selling to both sides of the American Civil War? Introducing smallpox-infected blankets to the American Indians?

Ireland: With the Provos, perhaps? Or with the slaves kept by the Gaels?

Belgium? With the Congo?

France: With Algeria? Indochina? With the "me-too"ism of nuclear weapons? With St. Bartholomew's Day?

Germany: Remarkable -- as bad a England, but with a much shorter time span as a country....

Holland: With the responsibility for introducing the slavery of Blacks into North America? For the African slave trade and all of those "Slave Castles" along the coast of West Africa?

Spain: With the extermination of the Caribs? With the conquests of Peru and Mexico? With the treatment of the Indians in what became the Southwestern United States?

Switzerland: For dealing with the Nazis during WWII?

Shall I continue? Poland, Hungary, Austria, Italy, Vatican City, Luxemburg, Mexico, Japan, China, Iran, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Australia, Canada -- all and more have Ugly Little Secrets in their history, and bigger they were or are the uglier the secrets. Even countries that no longer have a political existence -- Bohemia, for instance -- hold Nasty Little Things in their past.

Don't be too self-righteous, pdc. All of the things done in the past were done for the best possible motives.

And my own country should remember to be nice to others on the way up, 'cause it'll meet them again on the way down.