Character and Conduct
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Character and Conduct’
Amid the Don Pacifico Affair, William Gladstone told Lord Palmerston that pride in his own country did not excuse bossing others about like a global schoolmaster.
In 1850, Foreign Secretary Viscount Palmerston sent the British fleet to Athens, to force the Greek Government into paying compensation to David ‘Don’ Pacifico, a British subject, for losses suffered during a riot. In a stormy session on June 25th Palmerston won over the Commons by asserting that a British subject should enjoy all the security once enjoyed by Roman citizens. William Gladstone disagreed.
A few years before the Battle of Agincourt, the Duke of Orléans challenged King Henry IV to meet him in Bordeaux for a winner-takes-all joust.
In 1404, during an uneasy peace in the Hundred Years’ War, the Duke of Orléans invited King Henry IV of England to Bordeaux, then in English hands. There they were to do combat — with a few men, or single combat if Henry liked — and the winner would ransom the loser back to his people. Henry played for time, the two princes traded insults and Louis lost his temper.
A few weeks after a large French raiding party had been driven away from the Isle of Wight, another flotilla arrived from across the Channel demanding money with menaces.
Shortly before Christmas 1403, French pirates landed a thousand men on the Isle of Wight only to be scared off by irate islanders. In the New Year more ships came. Since Henry Bolingbroke (said their captains) had seen fit to depose his cousin King Richard II, and call himself Henry IV, some recompense was surely due for the humiliation of Richard’s young French wife, Isabella of Valois.
In all his years of soldiering at home and abroad, Major-General George Younghusband had never heard British soldiers talk like those in Kipling’s tales.
‘Tommy Atkins’ is the name given to the average British foot-soldier in the Great War. He is affectionately pictured as chirpy and a trifle insubordinate, always up to some lark, but brave as a lion when required. Major General Sir George Younghusband was in no doubt that Tommy was a literary fiction, but one that had become a living fact, and also that Rudyard Kipling had created him.
Goliath, a giant of a man from Philistia, has challenged Israel’s warrior-heroes to meet him in single combat, but only a shepherd boy is brave enough to step up.
When Goliath, a mountain of a man from Philistia, challenged Israel’s warrior-heroes to mortal combat only David, a shepherd boy, stepped up. King Saul felt shame that only this brave but hopeless boy was ready to fight for the nation. On the other hand, the prophet Samuel had foretold that a man ‘better than thou’ would take Saul’s crown, and it was a relief to know that there was no such man in all his kingdom.
When columnist ‘Alpha of the Plough’ was asked to select his most memorable moment of the Great War, he told the story of HMS Formidable.
Asked which event of the Great War had made the deepest impression on him, columnist ‘Alpha of the Plough’ recalled the fate of HMS Formidable, twice torpedoed by a German U-Boat during night-time exercises off the Devon coast on January 1st, 1915. The Captain, 34 officers and 512 crew died; 157 men were picked up from the water or made it ashore in two boats.