Anyone watching My Son Jack?

Subject: RE: Anyone watching My Son Jack?
From: GUEST,Edthefolkie
Date: 13 Nov 07 - 06:40 AM

I actually don't think that Kipling was a a simple jingo and a racist, as he is, or at least was, often painted. But the Blimps who did hold those attitudes misunderstood RK (to an extent, anyway) and he became a sort of tin god to them. By the time he was hobnobbing with Royalty he was well insulated from argument and criticism. And he paid a terrible price - his son's death.   

George Orwell, who was not noticeably right wing, defended Kipling. And of course Pete Bellamy's Kipling work changed a few attitudes - I suppose mine included.

Subject: RE: Anyone watching My Son Jack?
From: Simon G
Date: 13 Nov 07 - 07:00 AM

Anyone got the tune to the Mark Addison/John Blanks song The Fallen of Fulstow (two above), or can point me to a CD or contact.

Subject: RE: Anyone watching My Son Jack?
From: skipy
Date: 13 Nov 07 - 07:10 AM

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/youandyours/items/03/2005_23_mon.shtml
& click "listen"
Skipy

Subject: RE: Anyone watching My Son Jack?
From: Rasener
Date: 13 Nov 07 - 07:46 AM

You can hear it at this link

http://www.angelfire.com/folk/johnblanks/lincs.html

Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on the link that says "The Fallen Of Fulstow"

If you want approval to perform this song please get in touch with Mark Addison http://www.markaddison.net/

If you then click on the link that says"Instruments/Contact" and scroll down thwe page and you will find Mark's contact info.

Subject: RE: Anyone watching My Son Jack?
From: Rasener
Date: 13 Nov 07 - 07:49 AM

>>http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/youandyours/items/03/2005_23_mon.shtml
& click "listen"<<

Nice one Skipy

Here is the link Mudcat style http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/youandyours/items/03/2005_23_mon.shtml

Subject: RE: Anyone watching My Son Jack?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 13 Nov 07 - 08:05 AM

Here is the essay by George Orwell that "GUEST,Edthefolkie" pointed us to:
Rudyard Kipling

Quite long, but well worth reading. (Being long can be a virtue when things are well worth reading.)
.......................
It's too easy looking back to ignore the fact that what seems in hindsight insane was in 1914 a virtually universal consensus - a determination and enthusiasm for the War as a totally righteous enterprise. On both sides.

It united people who idolised Kipling's Imperialism, and people who detested it. Militant suffragettes who had been involved in something close to war against the British government backed the war. In Ireland a republican like Tom Barry joined up to fight for "the rights of small nations"(and in the process acquired military skills he later used to fight the British back home in Cork.) Gandhi out in India backed the war effort.

And we don't have to think back very far to see something very similar in the wake of the Two Towers.

It is fair to attack the judgement of people who back wars on the basis that they are mistaken - tempering this with a recognition of how very few people saw it that way at the time. But to support and promote a war in which other people's children are sent to die, and make damn sure it is not our children, that may be human, but it is certainly not something in which to take pride.

George Herbert Walker Bush and George W Bush, or Rudyard Kipling and Jack Kipling. Take your pick...

Subject: RE: Anyone watching My Son Jack?
From: Fiolar
Date: 13 Nov 07 - 08:13 AM

Interesting that the whole programme was made in Ireland. The special effects of the shelling were brilliant.

Subject: RE: Anyone watching My Son Jack?
From: Dave Masterson
Date: 13 Nov 07 - 09:29 AM

Superb drama - the whole cast were excellent. Daniel Ratcliffe as Jack was perfect casting, personifying the youth that were thrust into the nightmare. Like so many of the young soldiers of the time, take away the moustache and what do you have? Boys. I don't know how they did it. It certainly was a different world.

As I have stated in a previous thread, my great-uncle was a lieutenant in the Worcestershire Regt. and was killed at Paschendaele (Ypres 90 years on). The scenes of trench warfare were very graphic and gave one an idea of what he and his comrades must have gone through.

Subject: RE: Anyone watching My Son Jack?
From: GUEST, Sminky
Date: 13 Nov 07 - 09:46 AM

Here's the entry for John Kipling's grave on the Commonwealth War Commission's website (top entry).

Subject: RE: Anyone watching My Son Jack?
From: GUEST,Edthefolkie
Date: 13 Nov 07 - 10:15 AM

Thanks "McGrath of Harlow" for finding that link to Orwell's essay.
I first read that in the one of the four Penguin paperbacks of Orwell's letters and shorter works. Still got all of 'em.

Weirdly, shortly after reading it I saw Peter Bellamy for the first time - and he did lots of Kipling songs. So off I went and bought Peter's "Merlin's Isle of Gramarye". Wish Peter was still with us -what an enormous talent. I can imagine him arguing with Orwell "over there in paradise"!

Subject: RE: Anyone watching My Son Jack?
From: GUEST,strad
Date: 13 Nov 07 - 11:35 AM

Where is the poet for Iraq & Afghanistan? The loss of life is just as futile and useless now as then.

Subject: RE: Anyone watching My Son Jack?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 13 Nov 07 - 02:08 PM

'I'm sorry to disappoint you, but, at the time, the American Civil War was a minor conflict'

'We had twenty Waterloos........'

Shelby Foote

Subject: RE: Anyone watching My Son Jack?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 13 Nov 07 - 02:39 PM

Debra Cowan (Mudcatter DebC) did a nice performance of My Boy Jack at her concert in Lodi (California) Saturday. I first heard the song in a concert by Dave Webber and Anni Fentiman - it's on their Away from it all CD. Musical setting by Peter Bellamy.
-Joe-

Subject: RE: Anyone watching My Son Jack?
From: Simon G
Date: 13 Nov 07 - 03:43 PM

A heart thanks to the Villan for posting the words for The Fallen Of Fulstow and the link to the tune and Mark Addison. Great story and good song, not all great stories become good songs.

Subject: RE: Anyone watching My Son Jack?
From: Rasener
Date: 13 Nov 07 - 05:53 PM

Simon
You are very welcome.
I was hoping Mark would post on here.
John Blanks is in hospital at the moment, otherwise I am sure he would have posted.
Les Worrall

Subject: RE: Anyone watching My Son Jack?
From: GUEST,Georgina Boyes
Date: 13 Nov 07 - 05:59 PM

McGrath is right in saying that in 1914, many of the Suffragettes decided to postpone their struggle for equal rights for the duration of the War. A small number, however, stood out against militarism and withheld their taxes, attended international peace conferences and at considerable personal loss and risk, took every opportunity to bring the War to an end - among them Cecil Sharp's sister, Evelyn. Not many people know that.

Subject: RE: Anyone watching My Son Jack?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 14 Nov 07 - 03:01 AM

I had to laugh earlier. I came across this in another thread...

This week on mudcat, we've had people having a go at Ewan Maccoll, Alex Campbell - and now theres a thread saying nasty stuff about Big Tom, Daniel O'Donnel and his family, and Brendan Shine - all very popular entertainers who have given hours of pleasure to folk....   I can't understand it

Then on this thread I saw...

Like a lot of creative geniuses, RK was a prat.

Weelittledrummer - Do you not find these two statements somewhat contradictory? Or does RK not fall into the category of someone who has given 'hours of pleasure' to pople? ;-)

Cheers

Dave

Subject: RE: Anyone watching My Son Jack?
From: Rasener
Date: 14 Nov 07 - 03:22 AM

What's a Pople? Is that e female Pope LOL :-)

Subject: RE: Anyone watching My Son Jack?
From: GUEST,Mark Addison
Date: 14 Nov 07 - 04:05 AM

Thanks for the compliments re "Fulstow" Simon, and thanks to Les for posting the lyrics. You certainly don't need our permission to perform the song...we'd be grateful. (Especially if you fill in the PRS form!)
If you can get hold of a book called "All Things Lincolnshire" you will find the story, lyrics and transcription of the song in standard notation, although I believe John actually uses DADGAD tuning.
BTW, get well soon John!

Subject: RE: Anyone watching My Son Jack?
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 14 Nov 07 - 04:25 AM

"The loss of life is just as futile and useless now as then. "

The debate about modern wars goes on, but you insult the dead of WW1 by saying that their deaths were futile and useless.
The Kaiser's Germany was a nasty militaristic regime noted for its cruelty to its subject people in its colonies.
Their armies swept through Europe, massacring civillians not in the fog of war but on orders from the top.

Should they have been allowed to occupy the whole of Europe and most of Russia?
Were those young men wrong to stand against them?

Subject: RE: Anyone watching My Son Jack?
From: GUEST,Kieran
Date: 14 Nov 07 - 04:36 AM

A great piece of drama, very moving.
Glad to see they had a good set, costumes and equipment, obviously wasnt cheaply made, this contributed to its rawness in the battle scenes!
By the way if you want a great hard hitting book to read about WW1 and Dublin regiments that fought in the first world war would recommend A Long Long way by Sebastian Barry. What a book!!

Anyway good on yer ITV for making this drama.

Subject: RE: Anyone watching My Son Jack?
From: The Walrus
Date: 14 Nov 07 - 04:44 AM

"...'I'm sorry to disappoint you, but, at the time, the American Civil War was a minor conflict'

'We had twenty Waterloos........'

Shelby Foote ...


In the 20 odd years of the Taiping Rebellion (1851-64), the casualty list reached 20 - 30 Million as a direct result of Warfare and the resulting famines (At the Third Battle of Nanking in 1864, more than 100,000 were killed in three days*) but how many people know much (if anything) of that war?
Incedentally, it was this conflict which brought Charles ('Chinese') Gordon (Gordon of Khartoum) to the fore.

"...twenty Waterloos..."

Walrus


* By two armies which had firearms (probably not of the latest pattern), but very little artillery.

Subject: RE: Anyone watching My Son Jack?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 14 Nov 07 - 05:42 AM

This is too tedious. The American Civil War was not a minor conflict. This is just the mouthings off of some 'patriot' who thinks that Martin Carthy's farts are more artistically significant than every artist on Folkways Records. He probably voted for Thatcher - its that sort of jingoistic myopia.

Ewan MacColl, Alex Campbell, Big Tom, Daniel O'Donnel and his family, and Brendan Shine - none of these people were instrumental in getting young men into the killing grounds of the the First World War.

Rudyard Kipling was. I think 'prat' is a kindly and considered judgement on someone who did what he did. Mind you some of the arseholes on this site are still handing out white feathers to Ewan.

Subject: RE: Anyone watching My Son Jack?
From: Rasener
Date: 14 Nov 07 - 12:41 PM

Here you go, eat your heart out on these. A young lad made these

I'm Ollie and I'm 13. I went to see CBS with Michael Morpurgo on Sunday at Norwich. WOW! I'd admired them from afar before, but never really listened to them. It was a beautiful, moving concert and it really made me think. I have subsequently made two videos about WWI with CBS songs to back them.

Lay Me Low - Coope Boyes & Simpson

Soldier WW1 - Coope, Boyes & Simpson

Subject: RE: Anyone watching My Son Jack?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 14 Nov 07 - 02:06 PM

WLD - I know what RK did was pretty bad but on the other hand he did, to papaphrase, make exeedingly good poetry and often spoke out against the establishment.

I just think it is a little disingeneous of you to plead for the fair treatment of artists and then call one you don't happen to like a prat. But fair enough - It is your viewpoint and I will not argue that Mr K senior did not have failings. I think the drama we are discussing showed more than one.

I happen to dislike at least one of the people on your list but, because I know people can and do take offence, I have recently tried to avoid tilting at other peoples heroes. Maybe if we all did the same there would be fewer disagreements here?

Having said that, there are some peoples heores really worth tilting at! It is simply the marker between the ones who do and do not deserve respect that is the floating point of contention!

Cheers

Dave

Subject: RE: Anyone watching My Son Jack?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 14 Nov 07 - 02:24 PM

Papaphrase? Something my Dad said?

:D

Subject: RE: Anyone watching My Son Jack?
From: GUEST,Jane Roberts
Date: 14 Nov 07 - 02:58 PM

A powerful drama, a well written and emotional story. This will stay with me for a very very long time. Well done to all the cast.

Subject: RE: Anyone watching My Son Jack?
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 14 Nov 07 - 03:26 PM

Thomas Hardy's The Man I Killed

I wonder if this program will make it over to US TV.

~ Becky in Tucson

Subject: RE: Anyone watching My Son Jack?
From: GUEST,Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Nov 07 - 03:05 AM

'The Kaiser's Germany was a nasty militaristic regime noted for its cruelty to its subject people in its colonies.'
Course they were - and didn't the Hun bayonet babies and rape women - the newspapers said so at the time, so it must be true!!
Does anybody seriously believe that one regime was any worse than the other and that the people living under German colonisation fared any worse or better than did those of India or Malaya or Ceylon - give us a break!
And when the carnage was all over-then what?
Many of those brutalised in the trenches changed their uniforms from khaki to black and tan and went off to brutalise the Irish (where they are still spoken of with hatred and fear); or were shipped off to Russia to throw their weight behind the forces attempting to re-instate the Tzar.
And what about those who stayed at home having fought 'the war to end all wars'?
For them there was mass unemployment, hunger and degradation on the dole and on the street corners of Salford and Liverpool and Jarrow and Whitechapel.
And then the roundabout started up all over again and we were into yet another world-wide conflict; this time for 'a world fit for heroes to live in'.
And when that one was over there was Palestine and Greece and Korea and Cyprus and Malaya and Kenya and The Gulf and The Falklands - and Ireland, of course.
Since the end of WW2 our ally, the US, had invaded, bombed over 50 countries and has interfered clandestinely in the internal affairs of countless numbers of others, mostly with British support, if not with our active participation.
Our language has even been altered to cope with the ongoing situation - torture becoming special rendition, and the slaughter of civilians, collateral damage.
Nowadays the weapons used are napalm and Agent Orange and phosphorous rather than mustard gas, but it seems little has really changed fundamentally. The reasons for sending young people to kill and be killed are still very much the interests of the wealthy and powerful and despotic, and it is still the people who stand to gain least who give most.
When will we ever learn - as the lady sang.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Anyone watching My Son Jack?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 15 Nov 07 - 03:29 AM

I'm actually on with the final chapters of Deathly Hallows right now & having watched 'My Boy Jack' I can't help but see Harry Potter as the mustachioed Daniel-Ratcliffe-as-John Kipling in his WW1 captains uniform...

Subject: RE: Anyone watching My Son Jack?
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 15 Nov 07 - 03:54 AM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herero_and_Namaqua_Genocide

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_of_Belgium

These events are well documented historical facts.
Visit Belgium and ask.
It is also undeniable that German armies invaded France and the low countries and her battleships fired their huge shells into English east coast towns.

Subject: RE: Anyone watching My Son Jack?
From: GUEST
Date: 15 Nov 07 - 06:22 AM

It is also true that a British warship sailed up the Liffey in 1916 and fired shells into the centre of Dublin, that British soldiers burned and looted Cork City and also burned Miltown Malbay, Lahinch and Ennistymon,
as well as murdering innocent non-combatants in all these places.
Ehence the difference
What is your point.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Anyone watching My Son Jack?
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 15 Nov 07 - 10:14 AM

Follow the links and read Jim.
Should the people of Europe have just lain down to before the jack boots?
The point is Jim, that the Kaiser's armies came close to reaching Paris and the Channel ports and they had to be stopped.
Why insult the memory of the brave men who stopped them by saying that what they did was worthless?

Subject: RE: Anyone watching My Son Jack?
From: GUEST,Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Nov 07 - 01:16 PM

WW1 was an imperialist war for world markets and political influence.
The troops who filled the trenches were expendable and were sacrificed for that aim; their officers calculated on a daily basis how many soldiers should be sacrificed for how much ground gained.
British workers had no business slaughtering German workers. By 1919 Germany was involved in a workers revolution almost to the point of victory by the revolutionaries. The Russians showed the best sense and pissed off home.
Let those who start the wars fight them. Flag waving and handing out white feathers is for the Kiplings of this world (that is, as long as it doesn't involve personal sacrifices of course).
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Anyone watching My Son Jack?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 15 Nov 07 - 02:43 PM

So, Jim, British workers had no business slaughtering German workers? I wholy agree they didn't, but that sentence really sums up where your sympathies lie.

Was it OK for German workers to slaughter British workers then? I would guess from some of your other comments it was. A British warship sailed up the Liffey. Cork city burned. Innocent civilians were slaughtered. Of course those things are bad. But who's battleships bombarded the east coat of England in WW1? What about the cities destroyed in WW2? And as for the slaughter of innocent civilians I think our tutonic neighbours can outdo most people there can't they? Does a figure of 6 million ring any bells?

Of course we were all as bad as each other in some ways. Of course workers shouldn't fight fellow workers. Of course the men of politics, power and greed are to blame. However, when you start to lay it on so thickly about how much worse the British were, your good arguments become lost in meaningless racist rhetoric.

One final question. What has all this got to do with how good the drama was anyway?

Dave.

Subject: RE: Anyone watching My Son Jack?
From: Mysha
Date: 15 Nov 07 - 03:44 PM

Well, there can be said several things about the causes of the events that became the Great War, and then (how to say this in English) the World Inferno (?), so feel free to invite me to a thread about that topic.

In the mean time, in this thread, I'd like to know a bit more about that Kipling/Bellamy song that was mentioned a few times. Like, is this folk music? Is so, what are the lyrics like?

                                                                   Mysha

Subject: RE: Anyone watching My Son Jack?
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 15 Nov 07 - 04:05 PM

Mysha,

Bellamy set a number of Kipling's poems to music. He and others recorded them. See, for example, this current thread.

Whether it's folk... since it's Bellamy, folkies are attracted...

~ Becky in Tucson

Subject: RE: Anyone watching My Son Jack?
From: Mysha
Date: 15 Nov 07 - 05:01 PM

Hi,

Thank you. I understand this is something like Cornelis Vreeswijk singing Bellman. Bringing together the texts of the poet and the music skills of the artist, the products of such projects can be a joy to listen to. They do tend to lean towards the melancholy, but that may inherent to the combination of music and poetry.

I'll try to keep an eye on the other thread to see if more about it comes up. In the mean time, I must say that the search of the Rudyards for their son, followed by that final report, has the making of a folk song itself.

                                                                   Mysha

Subject: RE: Anyone watching My Son Jack?
From: Mysha
Date: 15 Nov 07 - 05:26 PM

Erm, I think that sentence might come out better with their name changed to "Kiplings":

I must say that the search of the Kiplings for their son, followed by that final report, has the making of a folk song itself.

                                                                   Mysha

Subject: RE: Anyone watching My Son Jack?
From: skipy
Date: 15 Nov 07 - 05:58 PM

History repeats!
Nuff said
Skipy

Subject: RE: Anyone watching My Son Jack?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 15 Nov 07 - 07:01 PM

If we're into cursing Kipling for backing the war, surely that should go along with similarly cursing the Labour Party and the TUC in the UK, and the Social Democrats in Gemany, who forgot all their fine words about international solidarity of the workers, and rallied to the flag.

The truth is, that's what people do in certain types of crisis, then as now. Indeed, there's always a saving minority who fall in line - but we shouldn't be too confident that we'd have been part of that minority, when we are scorning those who went along with the majority.

Subject: RE: Anyone watching My Son Jack?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 15 Nov 07 - 07:41 PM

If we're into cursing Kipling for backing the war, surely that should go along with similarly cursing the Labour Party and the TUC in the UK, and the Social Democrats in Gemany, who forgot all their fine words about international solidarity of the workers, and rallied to the flag.

The truth is, that's what people do in certain types of crisis, then as now. Indeed, there's always a saving minority who refuse to fall in line - but we shouldn't be too confident that we'd have been part of that minority, when we are scorning those who went along with the majority.

Subject: RE: Anyone watching My Son Jack?
From: GUEST
Date: 16 Nov 07 - 03:20 AM

"Was it OK for German workers to slaughter British workers then?"
No, of course it wasn't, and to suggest that my arguments against war suggest that I take sides is ingenuous, to say the least.
Those who fight at the front in wars have no say in the matter and therefore, have no reason to be sent off to slaughter and be slaughtered; simple as that.
McGrath: re your comments on The Labour Party, the TUC, The Social Democrats (and you can add the Provisional Government in Russia (Mensheviks) to that list); yes, they all swallowed the jingoism being spouted by the Kiplings of the world and betrayed their principles; they were well rewarded for doing so by becoming part of the establishment.
The same can be said for present day New Labour who threw their support behind the US in the war for oil that is at present being waged.
Sod them all, I say!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Anyone watching My Son Jack?
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 16 Nov 07 - 03:37 AM

OK Jim, but do you include in your rant those who, when home rule for Ireland failed utterly to get any democratic support, took up arms and started killing Irish and British workers, against an army fighting for national survival and in which hundreds of thousands of Irish workers had volunteered to serve?

Subject: RE: Anyone watching My Son Jack?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 16 Nov 07 - 07:54 AM

"Home rule for Ireland" had overwhelming support in Ireland, as it had for generations. And it was a policy on which the Liberal British Government in office since 1905 had actually repeatedly been elected, but had failed to deliver.

But all that's drifting the thread excessively, and belongs in other threads, I suggest.
...........................................

There's an almost irresistable tendency when looking back on historic disasters to make judgenments as if the people involved were acting in the knowledge of what actually transpired later. We see the war hysteria of 1914, and see it through the slaughter of the trenches. Future generations will see the Iraq invasion and see it through the nightmare of what has become of Iraq since sectarian mass murder, repression of women and religious minorities, Abu Ghraidb and Guantanamo.

But the naive people (including the likes of Kipling) who cheered on the troops and talked about a war to bring freedom weren't thinking in those terms. They fantasised about a quick and decisive campaign that they believed would change the world radically for the better. And they were in the vast majority.

The point of looking back is not to dole out blame, or for that matter praise, it is surely to try to examine why they were so catastrophically wrong in their judgement, and why those who were far closer to the truth in their warnings were dismissed and marginalised.

Subject: RE: Anyone watching My Son Jack?
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 16 Nov 07 - 08:11 AM

Sinn Fein, the political movement advocating home rule, was unable to attract voters and by 1915, ten years after its founding, was bankrupt and unable to pay its office rent.

Subject: RE: Anyone watching My Son Jack?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 16 Nov 07 - 08:49 AM

A fine point McGrath of Harlow, although I would have thought Kipling wasn't so much naive as he was innocent - at least innocent of hindsight, which is all very well depending on the colour of ones spectacles, rose tinted or otherwise, and what historical perspectives one chooses to subscribe to.

I remember once sharing fags in a Northumbrian cemetary with a WW2 veteran who'd lost his legs & genitals, aged 19, as a result of standing for hours on end in the sea at Dunkirk. I was nineteen myself at the time, and underwent something of an epiphany; humbled to be in the company of a hero, rather than a victim, who wore his medals with the same pride with which and he told his story.

I dare say if I'd been a songwriter I'd have penned a suitable song; something about me with my pig tails and assorted Anarchist & CND badges enjoying the sort of freedom for which he'd laid his life on the line, and survived, albeit somewhat diminished, but more of a man than I'll ever be.

Needless to say whilst the hair remains (in one final follicle-fling!) the badges, and the diverse ideologies that attended them, are long gone...

Subject: RE: Anyone watching My Son Jack?
From: Mysha
Date: 16 Nov 07 - 09:08 AM

Once more on the topic:

If that TV-film didn't have that Kipling / Bellamy song, what kind of music did it have?

                                                                   Mysha

Subject: RE: Anyone watching My Son Jack?
From: GUEST,Alan Purslow
Date: 16 Nov 07 - 11:39 AM

What a difference from the DI in The Thin Blue Line to be Mr Kipling. John Haig was astonishing good in both but his writing and acting in My son Jack was the best british acting I have witnessed for some considerable time. A thoroughly enjoyable and educating play.

Subject: RE: Anyone watching My Son Jack?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 16 Nov 07 - 11:57 AM

"home rule for Ireland failed utterly to get any democratic support" That just wasn't accurate.
...................

The trouble is, because of the attiutude summed up in that line "take up our quarrel with the foe", that initial, naive enthusiasm for what was expected to be a short road to victory got parlayed into support for a protracted bloodbath.

The same process happened in other wars as well - typically in Vietnam and now in Iraq. And somethimg analogous happens in other situations, for example in the history of events that followed the initial Russian Revolution.