In article <memo.20080229110544.2612A@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
prd@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(Paul Dormer) wrote:
> Last year, there was a film on ITV called My Son Jack, about Rudyard
> Kipling and his son. His son (played by Daniel Radcliffe of Harry
> Potter fame) had very bad eyesight, but was keen to enlist when the war
> broke out. His father pulled string to get him a commission, despite
> he'd failed several medical exams. He died the first time he led his
> men over the top. It broke his father, who wrote an epitaph for the
> fallen, "If any question why we died, Tell them, because our fathers
> lied."
Kipling was a strong sup****ter of the war throughout, as I think you can
tell from his writing. My guess is "our fathers lied" isn't a statement
about how he got his son into the army, which is a possible reading of
what you wrote although perhaps not the intended one, but about failures
of British policy earlier than that. In both his poetry and prose of the
pre-war period you can see arguments for much greater military
preparedness.
--
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/
http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/
Author of _Harald_, a fantasy without magic.
Published by Baen, in bookstores now
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