Niall Ferguson: On the Iranians taking British sailors hostage
... I have some sympathy with Capt Air, who has at least resisted the temptation to flog his story to the tabloids and Trevor McDonald. But can you imagine a Victorian naval officer talking this way? "Our rules of engagement stated," Capt Air explained, "that we could only use lethal force if we felt that we were in imminent danger of a loss of life." That's certainly how I would have characterised their predicament, surrounded as they were by RPG-toting members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard. "In addition," added Capt Air, "any attempt to fight back would have caused a major international incident and an escalation of tension within the region." Whereas being taken prisoner by the Iranians didn't cause these things?
It was different in the days of HMS Pinafore. The very year it was first performed, 1878, the fleet was sent east to prevent a Russian carve-up of the Ottoman Empire. In the music halls they sang: "We don't want to fight, but, by jingo, if we do, / We've got the ships, we've got the men, we've got the money too." Gilbert and Sullivan provided the sailors of HMS Pinafore with a highly topical chorus:
A British tar is a soaring soul,
As free as a mountain bird,
His energetic fist should be ready to resist
A dictatorial word.
He never should bow down to a domineering frown,
Or the tang of a tyrant tongue.
Read, mark, learn and inwardly digest, Captain Air.
Yet in one important respect, our world is not so different from the world of HMS Pinafore. The principal butt of the operetta's humour is the First Lord of the Admiralty, Sir Joseph Porter, a political hack who has no naval experience whatsoever:
When I was a lad I served a term
As office boy to an Attorney's firm.
I cleaned the windows and I swept the floor,
And I polished up the handle of the big front door.
I polished up that handle so carefullee
That now I am the Ruler of the Queen's Navee!
Of legal knowledge I acquired such a grip
That they took me into the partnership.
And that junior partnership, I ween,
Was the only ship that I ever had seen.
But that kind of ship so suited me,
That now I am the Ruler of the Queen's Navee!
I grew so rich that I was sent
By a pocket borough into Parliament.
I always voted at my party's call,
And I never thought of thinking for myself at all.
I thought so little, they rewarded me
By making me the Ruler of the Queen's Navee!
If that sounds familiar, it's because it's uncannily like the curriculum vitae of Defence Secretary Des Browne. Having risen through the ranks of the Scottish legal profession, Mr Browne was handed the safe Labour seat of Kilmarnock and Loudon in 1997. His area of expertise - as befits a man who is "the Ruler of the Queen's Navee" - is child law. He has come into his lawyerly own in the row over who authorised Faye Turney to sell her story.
It is, of course, a great English-speaking tradition to undervalue military experience in politicians. In the days of Gilbert and Sullivan, frock coats were supposed to out-rank brass hats. Countries where the opposite was true - such as Prussia - suffered from "militarism".
Yet there is a lot to be said for militarism where military matters are concerned. The besetting problem of both the United Kingdom and the United States before 1914 and again before 1939 was the tendency to leave decisions about grand strategy to hacks like Sir Joseph. Neither Stanley Baldwin nor Neville Chamberlain, the architects of appeasement, had served in the Armed Forces. The same was true of their American counterparts, Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt. Their legacy was a near-fatal unreadiness for the greatest conflict of all time....
Read entire article at Independent (UK)
It was different in the days of HMS Pinafore. The very year it was first performed, 1878, the fleet was sent east to prevent a Russian carve-up of the Ottoman Empire. In the music halls they sang: "We don't want to fight, but, by jingo, if we do, / We've got the ships, we've got the men, we've got the money too." Gilbert and Sullivan provided the sailors of HMS Pinafore with a highly topical chorus:
A British tar is a soaring soul,
As free as a mountain bird,
His energetic fist should be ready to resist
A dictatorial word.
He never should bow down to a domineering frown,
Or the tang of a tyrant tongue.
Read, mark, learn and inwardly digest, Captain Air.
Yet in one important respect, our world is not so different from the world of HMS Pinafore. The principal butt of the operetta's humour is the First Lord of the Admiralty, Sir Joseph Porter, a political hack who has no naval experience whatsoever:
When I was a lad I served a term
As office boy to an Attorney's firm.
I cleaned the windows and I swept the floor,
And I polished up the handle of the big front door.
I polished up that handle so carefullee
That now I am the Ruler of the Queen's Navee!
Of legal knowledge I acquired such a grip
That they took me into the partnership.
And that junior partnership, I ween,
Was the only ship that I ever had seen.
But that kind of ship so suited me,
That now I am the Ruler of the Queen's Navee!
I grew so rich that I was sent
By a pocket borough into Parliament.
I always voted at my party's call,
And I never thought of thinking for myself at all.
I thought so little, they rewarded me
By making me the Ruler of the Queen's Navee!
If that sounds familiar, it's because it's uncannily like the curriculum vitae of Defence Secretary Des Browne. Having risen through the ranks of the Scottish legal profession, Mr Browne was handed the safe Labour seat of Kilmarnock and Loudon in 1997. His area of expertise - as befits a man who is "the Ruler of the Queen's Navee" - is child law. He has come into his lawyerly own in the row over who authorised Faye Turney to sell her story.
It is, of course, a great English-speaking tradition to undervalue military experience in politicians. In the days of Gilbert and Sullivan, frock coats were supposed to out-rank brass hats. Countries where the opposite was true - such as Prussia - suffered from "militarism".
Yet there is a lot to be said for militarism where military matters are concerned. The besetting problem of both the United Kingdom and the United States before 1914 and again before 1939 was the tendency to leave decisions about grand strategy to hacks like Sir Joseph. Neither Stanley Baldwin nor Neville Chamberlain, the architects of appeasement, had served in the Armed Forces. The same was true of their American counterparts, Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt. Their legacy was a near-fatal unreadiness for the greatest conflict of all time....