[EyeBrock]

I find it strange Shep.

[ShepherdsDog]

it'll get you labelled a racist.

[EyeBrock]

Strange times we live in.

[ShepherdsDog]

I've run into a fair number of w-gs over here that think westerners aren't respectful enough towards China. You know the folk who protect(ed) the Taiwanese and their 'democracy' from their mainland brothers. How's that for strange?

[EyeBrock]

ShepherdsDog ShepherdsDog:

I've run into a fair number of w-gs over here that think westerners aren't respectful enough towards China. You know the folk who protect(ed) the Taiwanese and their 'democracy' from their mainland brothers. How's that for strange?

I encountered a similar view on western influence in HK pre 1997. I was on a course a couple of years ago with two HK cops and they want us back.

[Regina]

EyeBrock EyeBrock:

I was on a course a couple of years ago with two HK cops and they want us back...........

Home?

[Regina]

jeff744 jeff744:

EyeBrock EyeBrock:

What a load of old bollocks! You obviously know sweet FA about this. I'd be ashamed to post such drivel. Now run along.

Yes, call the other poster an idiot with nothing to back it up, what a great argument.

Going against traditional history would lead one to believe it is you who needs to back it up. Hopefully with more than one book.........
No one called you an idiot, it was your post that brought people to that conclusion.

[martin14]

jeff744 jeff744:

Yes, call the other poster an idiot with nothing to back it up, what a great argument.

Well, you are the one running around saying we were forced, and you havent presented anything to back it up.

You know, press gangs in the the streets, notes from Mackenzie King or diary entries
crying about how no one wants to do this, telegrams from the UK 'ordering' us
to provide troops, defeat of the 1942 referendum...

You got anything to indicate the majority of the population were coerced
into WW2 ?

I think either your teacher has done you a great disservice, or you have wildly
misinterpreted a few isolated events, and should have failed your history course.


If you have something, now is the time to pony up.

[BeaverFever]

$1:

The celebration of Canada’s UK and Irish past was pretty mainstream until the 1960’s. Check out any events from that era, Union Flags everywhere.

Part of the explanation is that The Union flag was officially the Flag of Canada until 1965. The Red Ensign was a semi-official flag, although it was increasingly used on government building and ships.

$1:

I don't know why Canada has such a problem acknowledging its Anglo-Celtic-Gaelic past.

This is likely explained by your earlier point:

$1:

..the result of a recent and huge wave of immigration after the turn of the century.

The Anglo-Celtic-Gaels simply stopped identifying so closely with their motherland and more as "Canadians". Sometimes some people make it sound as if Celtic/Anglo-Saxon Canadians were somehow preventedfrom celebrating their culture by some other Canadian group, but the truth is that those people simply chose to no longer do so. The American influence (which Australia lacks) is a big part of that story as well.

We also had the Homestead Act, which brought massive waves of people from Central and Eastern Europe, who settled in large numbers early in our history, especially in the sparsely populated prairies. Over time, these people and the Celtic/Anglo Saxons homogenized into one group who saw their ancestral origins as trivial. Later, Italians, Greeks, Jews came and the same thing occurred. The group that runs Canada now identifies itself as Canadian, and Caucasian Canadians today do not differentiate between each other very much, despite different ancestral origins. They do however, differentiate themselves from their ancestral home countries.

[Mustang1]

EyeBrock EyeBrock:

Well, really jeff. Come on....you are so off the mark it doesn't really warrant a sensible response. I tell you what, here's two interesting accounts of Canada and WW1;

"Fight or Pay" by Desmond Morton. An interesting social commentary of that period.

Ok, Mustang, don't give me shit, but I liked Berton's "Vimy". I know he made shit up but his historical drama works for me. I really felt he brought a Canadian angle to WW1.

I also recommend two British war poets. Wilfred Owen (my personal favourite) and Siegfreid Sassoon. Their stuff is haunting. No glory. 'Dulce et decorum est pro patria' and all that.

It’s all over the web but this stuff should be read from a book, with paper pages methinks.

Have a read of these suggested views/opinions/facts and I think you will re-think your little synopsis of WW1.

Berton's "Vimy" isn't all bad , but i'm a bigger fan of "Marching to Armageddon" with Granatstein and Morton (great historians)

In terms of Jeff's post, you're right - especially the part about the contemporary public's attention on the war. And i do agree about demands for proof about rebuttals that challenge basic information - as if the onus is always others, and not the original poster (intellectual relativism, here we come!)

I don't even know where to start about the WWII stuff.

[Mustang1]

Regina Regina:

jeff744 jeff744:

EyeBrock EyeBrock:

What a load of old bollocks! You obviously know sweet FA about this. I'd be ashamed to post such drivel. Now run along.

Yes, call the other poster an idiot with nothing to back it up, what a great argument.

Going against traditional history would lead one to believe it is you who needs to back it up. Hopefully with more than one book.........
No one called you an idiot, it was your post that brought people to that conclusion.

True.

[jeff744]

Regina Regina:

jeff744 jeff744:

EyeBrock EyeBrock:

What a load of old bollocks! You obviously know sweet FA about this. I'd be ashamed to post such drivel. Now run along.

Yes, call the other poster an idiot with nothing to back it up, what a great argument.

Going against traditional history would lead one to believe it is you who needs to back it up. Hopefully with more than one book.........
No one called you an idiot, it was your post that brought people to that conclusion.

Find a source where it says we ran off to go fight in another glorious war in WWII, it is pretty well accepted that we did it out of duty not because the war would be fun.

[bootlegga]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

bootlegga bootlegga:

I highly doubt that the US would have ever joined the war on the side of the Germans - they were making far too much money selling arms and ammunition to France and the UK. Not to mention the fact that most of the people who fought in the Civil War were dead and buried. That, coupled with the near constant British efforts to ingratiate themselves with US administrations (like siding with the US over Canada on the Alaskan Pandhandle dispute), made it very unlikely that the USA would ever have sided with the Central Powers.

And while the USA was a rising power, it couldn't have broken the Allied blockade of Germany by itslef, as France and Britain had far larger and more powerful navies during the war.

In the 1910 US Census German-Americans and Irish-Americans together formed the majority of the US population. That particular segment of the US populace was not so terribly enamored of either the UK or of France. While there was a commercial relationship do note that trade should not be mistaken for friendship. Prior to both world wars German and France were each others #1 trading partner and the US was Japan's #1 trading partner prior to WW2.

That the US and Britain were important trading partners did not preclude the USA from sitting out the war (as it did for most of it) or joining the Entente. President Wilson was keenly aware of British espionage in the US and an incident in the Washington Navy Yard of 1912 involved British nationals and was a minor scandal of the time.

The two most important things that swung US opinion to the Western Allies were the sinking of the Lusitania (which history now shows was a valid target for the Germans) and other attacks on passenger ships and then the Zimmerman telegram that was interecepted by and passed to the US by British intelligence.

That the US did not build a major navy for WW1 had to do with the fact that the German Navy was bottled up and controlled by the Royal Navy.

We had the industrial capability at the time to build a larger navy but it would've been senseless to build a massive navy to fight what was principally a land war by 1915. As it was, the battleships that the US sent to join the Brits in 1918 mostly just tooled around burning oil.

As to the Alaska Panhandle issue, the Brits more or less did cede the territory in return for improved relations with a rising industrial power whose Pacific Fleet at the time was more than a match for the Royal Navy that operated only from Esquimalt in the Eastern Pacific. Obviously, this action paid off some years later when the Brits needed the US for supplies and food during WW1.

I find it dubious that 51% of Americans were German/Irish-American in 1917, but as I'm too lazy to check, I'll have to let it go.

I know that trading partners go to war all the time. My point is that no matter what the prevailing opinion of the masses was, there was no way the US was ever going to join the Germans. Far too many special interest groups wanted to either sell arms to the Allies, support democracy against totalitarian empires (all of the Central Powers were), many others were upset over Germany's unrestricted U-Boat attacks - reminiscent of Britain's efforts to stifle US trade in the 19th century, or like some in the US government - they wanted to let the Brits bankrupt themselves fighting the war so that Britain - once the world's richest nation - would emerge from the war as a debtor nation instead.

No, I doubt there was any realistic chance of the US ever entering the war on Germany's side - even more so in 1917 when the Central Powers were mostly on the ropes (the Austrians had offered a separate peace in 1917, while the Ottomans had been pretty much driven out of most of the Middle east, and even the Germans were beginning to seriously feel the effects of the Allied blockade).

And my point about the US Navy not being able to break the blockade of Germany had nothing to do with the US ability/inability to build ships - it had everything to to do with the fact that IF the US entered on Germany's side, one of its key missions would have been to break that blockade - which given the relative sizes (and concentration) of the Allied naval forces vs the Central naval forces was almost impossible.

[Regina]

jeff744 jeff744:

Find a source where it says we ran off to go fight in another glorious war in WWII, it is pretty well accepted that we did it out of duty not because the war would be fun.

Possibly accepted in your circle of friends but hardly what history shows. If we "had" to go to war, why did we wait so long for Parliament to decide?

The Second World War began on Sept. 1, 1939 when Germany invaded Poland. Britain and France declared war on Germany on Sept. 3. In Canada, a special session of Parliament was called on Sept. 7. Canada remained neutral until Sept. 10, when Parliament approved the Prime Minister's request to go to war. King George VI announced declared war on Germany in the name of Canada the same day.
The day after Parliament's decision, the Globe and Mail described Canada's entry into the war as follows: "This peaceful country, 3,000 miles distant from the scene of the conflict, which desires to live on terms of amity with the whole world, has spoken in it own right for human justice and equity, prepared to defend with life and its full treasure principles more sacred than life or material welfare. The solemn decision reached was the echo of a nation's soul, the Globe and Mail continued, "torn by wholesale murder and brigandage on land and sea and tyranny which it could not in silence see imposed on others wishing to live undisturbed like itself."

[PENATRATOR]

EyeBrock EyeBrock:

GreenTiger GreenTiger:

Last night I saw the movie Passendale. It was a good movie. I'm interested in how accurate the attitudes, feeling of the people at the time in that Zeitgeist. Were they accurately depicted in the film?

. I don't know why Canada has such a problem acknowledging its Anglo-Celtic-Gaelic past.
.

But then they are all carrying the convict DNA! Buggers!.

I think this guy may have been where it started EB. Just a thought