61–70 of 116 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That recipe doesn’t work universally, there are wars of expulsion and extermination.
If your values are non-violent and you're value producers, that doesn't happen. Sure, there can be situations where the land itself is valuable and the people on it are only a liability, but usually the value is in the people themselves.
The ceremony, pomp and reverence we pay to soldiers and the fallen are all aimed at making sure the young remain willing to do an ugly job at affordable prices. For every poem like this there is a parade, monument, wreath-laying ceremony, or the modern equivalent of young girls handing white feathers to young boys. It seems ungrateful to view it this way. We owe a real debt to the soldiers who died for the world we l…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
in those times everyone was conscripted , and people had a visceral feeling of fighting for their actual land and family out of necessity. Perhaps ukrainians have that feeling. US army is more like mercenaries on a misson. Besides, Us soldiers have not fought on US mainland for century
Ukraine is far from a monolith. It's an agglomeration of bits and pieces attached in the aftermath of WW2 to a Ukrainian core. But there are plenty of ethnic Poles, Hungarians and Russians whose lands got attached that don't identify with it. Before you downvote (OK, you can downvote first, I don't particularly care) - go look up what folks in Hungarian parts of Ukraine do to army recruiters.
I mean honestly, wasn't all of the USSR a big agglomeration? The bottom line now is that Ukraine is a sovereign nation recognized by the rest of the world, and they have been invaded.
The recital by Christopher Eccleston is more dramatic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qB4cdRgIcB8
[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001df48 [2] https://open.spotify.com/episode/2nd5iWVnNCWL2ulAVsSDLe
Henry Newbolt's Vitai Lampada https://net.lib.byu.edu/english/wwi/influences/vitai.html Captures a sense of duty against the realities of war. Randall Jarrell's "Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57860/the-death-of-th... Is a much grimmer perspective. Richard Grenier captured the truth for civil society: "As George Orwell pointed out, people sleep peacefully in their beds at nigh…
World War 1 was not the kind of war that delivered freedom. It was more the kind that elites entered into without full regard of the costs.
In a way it's sadder than other conflicts: none of the participants entered the war for power or control, they all thought they were defending themselves. Plenty of people knew the human cost would be high. Events and fear and lack of fast communication just took over. And it set up the conditions for WW2 and probably the cold war.
This reminds me of what could be considered a complementary poem/song, by John F. Kendrick: -- Onward, Christian soldiers! Duty's way is plain: Slay your Christian neighbors, or by them be slain. Pulpiteers are spouting effervescent swill, God above is calling you to rob and rape and kill, All your acts are sanctified by the Lamb on high; If you love the Holy Ghost, go murder, pray and die. -- Onward, Christian soldi…
Why did the title of the poem get translated?
We've reverted the title. But also re-upped the post, because about half of this thread is surprisingly good.