“Good bye to all that...”

Les Britanniques ont fêté le 90ème anniversaire de la bataille de la Somme, commencée le 1er juillet 1916. On connaît les circonstances de cette bataille, qui fut le plus grand carnage, et le plus inutile au vu des résultats obtenus, de l’histoire militaire du Royaume-Uni.

Pour autant, ce temps-là ne mérite pas toutes les condamnations dont on l’a souvent chargé. Il n’est pas sûr que les vertus humaines fussent, du temps de la bataille de la Somme, moins hautes que les nôtres, dans un temps où l’on a appris à éviter les carnages pour soi (l’Occident), pour les réserver aux autres.

Cette chronique de l’écrivain et historien Geoffrey Wheatcroft, dans l’International Herald Tribune, nous éclaire bien à ce propos. Elle mesure combien la réduction du carnage chez nous est directement proportionnelle à l’augmentation de la lâcheté et de la médiocrité.

« A draft was introduced in the course of that war, more for political than military reasons, but the millions who joined up in the first two years did so freely. They were inspired by patriotism, by anger at the ruthless German violation of Belgian neutrality, and, in the case of the men from the higher classes, by “a sense of private honor,” in Evelyn Waugh's words, “of a debt on demand that had been incurred by privilege.”

» Those young idealists originally believed that the war would be over soon, but also that it was fine and noble thing. “Now God be thanked Who has matched us with His hour,” wrote the poet Rupert Brooke shortly before his death.

» After the war, a myth grew up that callous or even cowardly officers drove men to their deaths. In fact, junior officers were three times more likely to be killed than private soldiers, not because they were braver but because they were expected to set an example and, in an only half-ironical phrase, to go ahead and get shot first. Not only subalterns: On that first day on the Somme, 30 British officers of the rank of lieutenant-colonel or above were killed.

» “Equality of sacrifice” is sometimes a convenient phrase, but no one could deny it then. When the war began, the prime minister was the Liberal, H.H. Asquith, and the Tory leader of the opposition was Andrew Bonar Law. Both would lose sons in action. Lord Salisbury was an earlier prime minister; five of his grandsons were killed. And several younger Members of Parliament, including William Gladstone, grandson of one more prime minister, joined up and were killed.

» All that is a sharp contrast with a Blair government, not one of whom has ever performed any kind of military service, and a Bush administration whose senior members have never been much burdened by any sense of private honor incurred by privilege. Like Dick Cheney, they “had other priorities” when they should have been drafted. »

Mis en ligne le 2 juillet 2006 à 15H27