Those who refuse to pass their conceits are destined to be reminded?

Apologies to SANTAYANA1. I note that this book is coming out soon. Likewise, when Margaret MACMILLAN had her last book launched "The Uses and Abuses of History" she managed to have an excerpt printed in the National Post that highlighted the same controversy. Perhaps this is just opportunism?

However I am sympathetic to our veterans. My father was one of them until his death in 2000 - and he never spoke glowingly of his wartime experience. I think he was just glad to have survived - unlike many of his compatriots. Survivor guilt perhaps.

What I think is wrong is to re-evaluate the morality of war - after the fact. Revisionist History. War is hell - pure and simple - you either win and live or lose and die. How do we moralize that? I am sure there were probably alot of terrible things done by our us and our Allies, but they were also fighting against another tyrannical dictator who was ruthless. We now know more about the atrocity's of Buchenwald and Auschwitz that our parents did at the time - which was perhaps before the bombing of Dresden. I know that the London Blitz was as much a terror campaign as strategic bombing because my mother's family were subjected to it. My aunt patrolled the community weekly looking for anyone who had not put up blackout curtains for months on end. The fear of not knowing if your home would be hit was real. Do not tell me that was not Hitlers and Goering's intention.

[Addendum: Oct 16 A number of letters have been printed in the National Post - many from veterans - who object along the same lines. The one that was most satisfying was this one who throws the impertinant lines at the end of the article, back at them.]

Footnote:
1) George SANTAYANA The Life of Reason 1906. "Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." This has produced numerous paraphraseings and variants.