44 Replies to “For King And Empire”

  2. “Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and make perpetual Light to shine upon them.”
    God bless Canada.

  3. Mack, if I may, I would like to echo your blessing. It was concise and to the point.
    In the context of the fifty year time span preceding 1914 it was a necessary war, even though it could have been avoided. The war, for both winners and losers, destroyed the old Europe and centuries of a style of diplomacy and centuries old monarchies. The birth of new age weapons devastated old world military tactics and armies. The war also birthed or gave opportunity to evil ideologies that killed 150 million people in the twentieth century and one of which still runs amok in our universities.
    In a sense that war and the resultant peace results is still with us with every truck that plows into a crowd of shoppers, a bomb that goes off in a bus, and a woman that gets raped in a city in Europe.

  4. Indirectly related to this topic … a few minutes ago, I watched part of the ceremonies taking place at the Vimy memorial. As the guests of honour were being announced — Princes Charles, William & Harry, GG David Johnston, French President François Hollande, PM J Trudeau — the only one who waved to the audience applauding was ? guess who?
    I don’t know anything about protocol … but it seems to me on such a solemn occasion, waving to a seemingly adoring crowd should not be part of the proceedings. No doubt our esteemed PM will be taking selfies at gravesites.

  5. After 100 years, the results are in.
    We lost.
    After 100 years, this year 2017, of paying the “Temporary Income Tax” to pay for the costs incurred fighting this War….
    Temporary obviously means something different in Klepto-Speak.
    We should have surrendered?
    After this war,WW1, Europe endured a few years of anarchists blowing fat comfortable people up.
    Now we have “Lone Wolf Terrorists”.
    So what is the difference?
    Results are the same.
    Except the modern “Mentally Ill” have better press agents.

  6. I listened to a bit of CBC’s coverage right to the point where they went off on the tangent that Canada’s army was all white and how blacks, Natives,and women were not treated very well and were not allowed into the regular ranks. Really, was anybody treated well?

  7. I remember reading in Pierre Burton’s book “Vimy”, that 80 percent of the soldiers in the WW1 Canadian army were British immigrants or the children of British immigrants. Back then the British Empire was just an extension of Britain. That Canada (and Britain)doesn’t exist any more.

  8. Sorry Ken but I cannot agree that WW I was a necessary war for Canada or the USA. Reading ‘The War That Ended Peace’ by MacMillan it angers me that the main purpose of WW I appears to me the preserving of economic dominance by Britain and France over a more competitive and technologically superior Germany. Add in the sorry role of monarchists throughout Europe. Vested economic interests and a layer of inbreed losers is who Canadian boys died for.
    IMHO Canada had no purpose being there. At that the fumbling attempt at making peace failed as the victors grabbed for the prizes. Their efforts ensured WW II which again cost Canada untold deaths which have in turn stunted and deflected the direction of our country’s evolution. Perhaps we should reflect on where Canada would be today if we had sat out WW I. Add the USA to that equation. If they had not come joined in the Allies would have had to make peace with Germany in 1917.
    Your point that radical Islam resulted from WW I has some merit but let us also realize that both WW I & II laid the ground work for a ‘progressive’ movement that has strengthened with each generation. It is the movement that now controls our education, media and labor movement. It is the movement that uses radical Islam to pursue their own objectives. Radical Islam is a tool used not just by Arab governments but also Western progressives.

  9. Ken; thanks! Your summary of events helps place the Sacrifice within the context of history and if I may within the evolution of civilization.
    As I have mentioned here before; My Grandfather Henry Albert Michelin was not present at Vimy Ridge. He received a ” blimey wound” in one of the first Canadian over-the-top excursions in February 1915.
    Being wounded with a gunshot in His left shoulder above His Heart provided a return to England for recovery. The action He faced at Ypres was “to the Front for Trench Training” of three Days return to base, then to the front and over-the-top to attack the Boche.
    Battalion Commander- Birchal was killed in the same Lincoln-Welland Regiment as when Henry Albert Michelin at the age of 42 was Wounded. His was one of the “lucky” of the Linky-Winks; as in a recent over-the-top, “might have been the next one” the Boche used Mustard Gas against the Noire Troops from Northern Africa and the other Colonial Troops.
    Several of My Grandfather’s “Mates” were gassed and among the Survivors spent their remaining days with seriously damaged lungs and crippling Respiratory Disease.
    My Wife and I have the pleasure and advantage to be closing out the Winter with a week’s stay in Bermuda. I have listed below an excerpt of Bermuda’s 1620 Governor Butler speech in the Second Parliament of the Comonwealth; Bermuda. This small gathering of a small population on an outpost of the British Empire, which remains a vibrant Community 400 years later is as follows;
    Fourthly, we are to endeauour and aime at the good and benefitt of our selues in perticuler I meane at the generall good and wellfare of the inhabitants of thes Ilands wherein we liue: and herein, in the first place, we are to provide against the attempts of all forraigne enemies, by secureing our harbours, and places of access by botes or shypinnge: and this is done by sufficient fortification, and well manning of them, as also by makeing, of our selues in generall to vnderstand how to defend ourselues, that is to saye, to be soldiers: otherwise, I see not with what comfort we can plant tobacco, and take paines to make it good (as we ought to doe) vnless we prouide to keep it when we haue it. Me thincks, that euery married man that hath a childe borne to him here should (if it were but for his childs sake) be ready to keepe it a freeman:
    and ther is noe earthly meanes to doe it better than this. It may be, some of you conceiue and flatter yourselues that all thinges this waye are well ynough already, and that ther needs nor more to be done than ther is. It is a deceitfull and dangerous apprehension this: and you doe noe lesse than betraye yourselues and your owne safetye by it.
    I have kept the writing as it appears, both in spelling and as one paragraph(?) If there are people who are bothered, please remember in the 1600’s and for while later U & V were interchangeable as was the addition of E’s as felt desirous.
    Pare itself was expensive and especially in outposts such as Bermuda; therefore separation between thoughts being conveyed seldom had room to provide Such.
    I do hope some, hopefully at least one will forward the “Bermuda Encouragement” by Governor Nathaniel Butler in 1620 as some impetus to Canada’s present Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to not diminish the Sacrifice of the Families of the 600,000 Men who fought in World War One. Represnting approximately 20 % of the Families in the overall Canadian Population of Six Million Citizens.
    It is also important to explain to Trudeau 2nd; in case it is not evident trying to Govern By Fiat as did Trudeau 1st; with suborning the “Human Rights of the Individual” in the still not accepted 1981-1982 Constitution. Canada and the rest of the Free World will no longer accept FIAT “let it be done” pronouncements.
    Canadians respect the Authority of a Constitutional Monarchy, as the necessary Final Arbiter in the, at least presently in Canada’s Political Arena, Final Arbiter. Whether Canada’s Final Arbiter rests in the British Isles or in the Geographical Territory known a Canada. Canada’s Federal Cabinet have not been selected to Move Canada towards “Nations without Borders”.
    Brexit for Canada; from it’s present Internal Borders; is not yet the Path of Resistance to A Manipulative Control Pattern by an Elected Representation and/or an Aggressive Bureaucracy increasingly moving to a “ology” of We Know Better Than You.
    Anymore than the Ordinary Citizen’s Sons-Husbands-& Kin–now including Daughters-Wives-& Kin who sacrificed so much as Volunteers & Conscripted Military willing to follow Their Leadership into Harms

  10. “He received a ” blimey wound””
    For the sake of accuracy, that would be a “blighty”

  11. WWI and WWII were basically the same war with only a few years in between to re-arm. The ideology behind both were in large part the destruction of the established order to usher in progressive socialism and rid the earth of God and His children both Jews and Christians. The Jews obviously were to be destroyed during WWII but the Christian heart of Europe and North America was removed in WWI. Memory serving correctly it was Malcolm Muggeridge who described the men coming back from the WWI trenches as ‘half crazed individuals who ascended to the pulpit to preach the ‘social’ gospel.

  12. “In the context of the fifty year time span preceding 1914 it was a necessary war”
    .
    I was one of the stupidest wars ever fought, right up there with the Boer War.
    The whole problems was the great powers of Europe spent over 1,000 years fighting each other in the as many as 308 countries that made up Germany. The disruption that came from the unification of Germany and the shift in the balance of power was more than they could bear. It is no coincidence that the former enemies the U.K., France, and Russia became allies in defeating Germany.
    It is almost humourous that the U.K., France, and Russia with huge foreign empires were fighting for freedom against Germany which was ethnically homogeneous with a tiny foreign empire. Germany was the most democratic of the bunch.
    It was simply the Game of Empires, not unlike the Gme of Thrones.

  13. Watching the ceremony, which was excellent in my view. When Trudeau was to speak both my wife and I rose and left the room spontaneously. He was taking selfies at the end of the remembrance ceremony. What a maroon.

  14. Joe,
    My uncle told me the story of a WW I vet who had a huge part in raising him as my grandfather was killed in a logging accident when my uncle was only 5. This vet took my uncle under his wing during tough times.
    This vet served in the British army under famed Lawrence of Arabia. He was a machine gunner in a armored car. One can only imagine what he saw and did. In any event on a hot summer day in the ’20’s he went to the barn and blew his head off. My uncle told me that story only because I was a big Hogan’s Heroes fan during that time. He got very angry with me as it trivialized what mean went through in WW I & II. I never forgot.
    Another relative my Mother talked about was a WW I vet who was gassed. He made it home but was always sick. He built a cabin by a stream and lived there in peace and quiet until he died from his bad lungs only 4 years after coming home.

  15. Yes CT I am of an age where I can remember WWI and WWII vets and talking to them in the legion on Remembrance Day. I can still see the distant stare that came on their faces as they relived some the the horrors they had witnessed. The gentleman who worked in the toy store couldn’t move his head after he was shot in the neck. One fellow couldn’t drink his coffee. He would order one at the local cafe then before he took his first sip he would rush out the door being chased by demons only he could see. A few minutes later he would return to the cup and with legs and arms jumping in nervous tension he would take a few sips and the race off again…. Wars leave many scars. Some on individuals and some on whole societies. One of the scars on our society is the abandonment of the moral codes and social norms held to for centuries in ‘Christian’ nations. While the progressives were and are largely agnostic/atheist they received cover from the ‘Christian’ preachers who proclaimed a social gospel as a way to prevent another more horrific war.

  17. Good to see that, even as the noise over the Trump missile strike is dying down, SDA’s finest conspiracy theorists are quickly refocussing on second-guessing history.

  18. Couldn’t watch any of it, not by the Corpse propagandists, That harridan Lisa the Flames, or when his Spudness was there. Just embarrassing for our country to have to endure the legion of left wing propaganda that we are forced to live under.

  19. A foolishly unnecessary “War to End All Wars”, which accomplished nothing but setting the stage for more foolishly unnecessary wars which followed, to needlessly waste even more young lives “For King And Empire”.
    ‘God of our fathers, known of old,
    Lord of our far-flung battle line,
    Beneath whose awful hand we hold
    Dominion over palm and pine—
    Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
    Lest we forget—lest we forget!‘

  21. Thanks for the post. “For King and Empire” was an excellent watch and gave a good perspective on many fronts of the importance that the Vimy Ridge Battle had. The immense effort given to planning, logistics, training and the courageous execution by Canadian soldiers beginning 100 years ago was beyond eye opening. The tours of the French, Canadian and German cemeteries provided a visceral connection to the horrific sacrifices given by so many in the name of Canada. I disagree that the there was no value in Canada’s participation. We matured into a real nation bound through that courage and sacrifice. It struck me as profoundly sad that many of our courageous dead lay almost forgotten many thousands of miles from their homes. They deserved to come home. I fear “Lest we Forget” has come to pass 100 years later.

  22. Justin the Clown waving at the crowd and taking ‘selfies’ like a demented idiot. What an embarrassment to Canada at such a dignified and solemn occasion.

  23. The fact that at a solemn event like that, those in attendance cheered when his name was mentioned is what sent me round the twist. That must be a first.
    Someone should have been holding a sign that said HOLD THE APPLAUSE.

  24. And so it goes…a lot more than a tenth now.
    1Sa 8:10  And Samuel told all the words of the LORD unto the people that asked of him a king. 
    1Sa 8:11  And he said, This will be the manner of the king that shall reign over you: He will take your sons, and appoint them for himself, for his chariots, and to be his horsemen; and some shall run before his chariots. 
    1Sa 8:12  And he will appoint him captains over thousands, and captains over fifties; and will set them to ear his ground, and to reap his harvest, and to make his instruments of war, and instruments of his chariots. 
    1Sa 8:13  And he will take your daughters to be confectionaries, and to be cooks, and to be bakers. 
    1Sa 8:14  And he will take your fields, and your vineyards, and your oliveyards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants. 
    1Sa 8:15  And he will take the tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards, and give to his officers, and to his servants. 
    1Sa 8:16  And he will take your menservants, and your maidservants, and your goodliest young men, and your asses, and put them to his work. 
    1Sa 8:17  He will take the tenth of your sheep: and ye shall be his servants. 
    1Sa 8:18  And ye shall cry out in that day because of your king which ye shall have chosen you; and the LORD will not hear you in that day. 

  25. Up to the end of 1916, I thought 60% were British immigrants who had arrived as recently as 1913 and early as the late 1800s. I’ve read hundreds of attestation papers and 80% is a bit high. Not that it matters. What does matter is that we lost a generation, men who never were able to marry and raise a family.

  26. WW1 destroyed Newfoundland; it never recovered from that loss. After the war the British only twisted the knife deeper.

  27. After the war was over, the people of Newfoundland discussed how to properly remember those who had fallen. Someone suggested that a university be established in their memory and that’s how Memorial University got started.

  28. In hindsight 20/20 vision is easy and I was being brief. If you read my post again, you will note I said in the “context of the time”. Britain and France were indeed opposed to a united Germany competing with them on the world’s economic and political stage. The war was the beginning of the destruction of the preeminent economic world status of Britain and France. The US, at that time a sleeping giant, was not yet a major factor, but the war changed that.
    Btw, I did briefly mention the birth of the ‘progressive’ movement and I do have McMillan’s book and as well, her book, “Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World”. In Paris 1919, she talks about the frustration of the Arab delegation led by Lawrence of Arabia in being ignored concerning the breakup of the Ottoman Empire and the resultant birth and roots of the Muslim Brotherhood and radical Islam.

  29. Bongo is a tactless jackass. Doesn’t know how to act at any function. Wonder he didn’t pirouette while on stage.
    He didn’t attempt to ‘be with one’ as he usually does, relating some family story in an effort to ingratiate himself to the crowd. Maybe his last experience where he thought he’d had a refugee background because his gramps had arrived in Canada from Scotland didn’t go over that well. Then again on perusal of his background perhaps there has never been a Trudeau’s in the military.

  30. Close to 61,000 Canadians were killed during the war, and another 172,000 were wounded. Many more returned home broken in mind and body. The small colony of Newfoundland suffered 1,305 killed and several thousand wounded.
    …and what did that sacrifice accomplish besides creating conditions in Germany that directly led to the rise of Hitler and the Third Reich, WW2, and the extermination of six million Jews and other “untermench”?

  31. …and what did that sacrifice accomplish besides creating conditions in Germany that directly led to the rise of Hitler and the Third Reich, WW2, and the extermination of six million Jews and other “untermench”?
    It’s interesting that you mentioned this. Several months ago, John Batchelor conducted an interview with someone, the subject being Woodrow Wilson. Apparently Wilson had some misgivings about some of the conditions of the Treaty of Versailles. He believed that forcing Germany to pay reparations would lead to resentment.
    Considering what happened a few years later, he may have been right.

  32. Scar and CT’s assessments are entirely correct. It was a needless war promulgated by the established colonial powers to prevent the upstart country of unified Germany from developing a competitive colonial empire. It was directed by old men in fancy uniforms living a safe life of luxury in chateaus far behind the front lines, who ordered young men to be maimed and killed in pointless charges into superior firepower, all for the glory of King And Empire.
    It was a very stupid war of egotistic vanity that only lead to additional wars that we’re still fighting today. The way the British and French carved up the Middle East with no understanding of the culture and history of the region directly led to the conflicts still brewing today.
    Much like the humiliating conditions of the Treaty of Versailles, and what it did to postwar Germany, the US defeat and humiliation of Saddam’s empire created ISIS in retaliation.
    ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.’ –George Santayana

  33. Others disagreed to the harsh terms but France wanted their pound of flesh and since the battle was fought on their territory, I certainly am not going to second-guess it. They most likely did enough times themselves.
    So let’s rejoice that the Germans lost and it wasn’t all in vain;
    otherwise, you couldn’t bear the pain of the loss of life for nothing.
    Regarding actual figures, on http://www.ww1canada.com: “The thing is, you see a 66,000 figure, that’s the one cited by the Department of Veterans Affairs, that’s how many names are in the Books of Remembrance, and that’s the figure that almost everyone uses.
    “So who are those 6,000 Canadians, if you go from 60,000 to 66,000? They are Canadians who came back to Canada, who died of their wounds, who died of influenza or who simply died, during the period from 1919 to about mid-1921 when the Books of Remembrance cut off.”
    My uncle’s name isn’t included because he lived after the battle for the Regina Trench, but he never had a well day till he finally died in 1946. Or take the men who were confined to hospitals like Sunnybrook for years, or until they died. The full price of a war is never fully known.

  34. So let’s rejoice that the Germans lost and it wasn’t all in vain;
    otherwise, you couldn’t bear the pain of the loss of life for nothing.
    No friggin way will I rejoice in the humiliation meted out to Germany, because it ultimately caused far more death and suffering than the casualties of WW1. I can bear the loss of life for nothing because it reminds me of the folly of war and the vain stupidity of old men who send youngsters off to die to feed and inflate their old worn out egos.

  35. There’s another thing that WW I created: the Frankfurt School.
    Socialists around the world thought that the war would finally be the ultimate class struggle that they longed and waited for and that the proletariat would finally overthrow and eradicate the bourgeoisie. They got their wish only in Russia.
    When their dreams didn’t come true, they changed their “struggle” from one of class warfare to that of “oppressors and oppressed”. The ultimate goal was the complete destruction of western civilization and, being nihilists, they were unconcerned with what replaced it.
    That brand of leftism now infests all aspects of western society.

  36. The Battle of Vimy Ridge can be rightfully remembered as the birth of what we now call the Canadian Forces. As a veteran of the Canadian Forces I take pride in honoring those who fought there. From that battle onward our soldiers, sailors and airmen have served our country with honor and distinction, and that’s something all Canadians can be proud of.

  37. Wow. Just wow.
    There is a lot of garbage revisionism here. I dislike being offensive to other posters, but the denigration of the sacrifices made are an affront to me and my dead relatives who fought in that conflict. Two great uncles that my grandmother often spoke of.
    Germany was aggressive. Germany invaded. The only decision was whether or not to resist.
    One can make many statements about the tensions leading up to that invasion and the actual call to arms, but it truly was Germany that decided to solve problems through violence.
    Pray tell, should the allies have simply welcomed the Germans?
    Have any of you read about the atrocities the WW1 era Germans perpetrated on the Belgian citizens on their way to France?
    Would you not have stepped up to defend your country?
    Would you not have honoured solemn treaties signed in peacetime?
    The causes are open for debate. The aggression was brought about by Germany and is NOT open to debate.
    As the posters on this board should know well, ignoring aggression because it is far away simply allows it to grow and become a monster.
    I do agree that Versailles was terrible and sowed the seeds of WWII. Churchill’s excellent history of WWII shows how easily WWII COULD have been avoided though – simply by having the will to resist in the early 30’s. So WWII was NOT inevitable.

  39. Autoguy, thank you.
    As is generally ignored in revisionist discussions about the Great War, it was the German Empire that occupied Luxemburg on 2 August 1914 and invaded Belgium on 4 August 1914, thus precipitating the conflict on the Western Front.

  40. Autoguy & JJM;
    I don’t think it is revisionist history to question the motivations of the many who are responsible for WW I. Asking those questions is not meant to be disrespectful of those who fought. Germany acted first in battle without doubt. From the turn of the century Britain and France plus the lessor countries actively worked against a German ascendency. The Brits did by building a huge navy with the attendant costs. Breaking Germany economically was the foreign policy of many.

  41. He received a ” blimey wound” in one of the first Canadian over-the-top excursions in February 1915.
    I think it was called a “Blighty wound” as they were returned to the safety of England (Blighty).

  42. Also generally ignored, but not by historians, was the harsh terms visited upon France by the victorious powers of the Franco Prussian War.
    That arguably led to the harsh terms of the Treaty of Versailles, notwithstanding other motivations of which there are plenty.
    One thing leads to another?
    “Versailles’ predecessor – the Treaty of Frankfurt, 1871 …..”
    There is an article on the Treaty of Frankfurt, which ended the Franco-Prussian War in “Intertemporal Dimensions of International Economics” Vol.82, No.2. (P.175). It sounds remarkably like Versailles in reverse:”
    “Reparation payments were nothing new in 1871, and the Germans were widely expected to demand compensation for the war which France was generally blamed for starting, and which France decisively lost. What was new was the magnitude of the indemnity…..”
    “The indemnity was widely considered unpayable, a device intended to weaken France and justify a long period of German military occupation.” (A footnote here says “Bleichroder, Bismarck’s personal banker, also thought the demand unpayable.”)”
    The Treaty of Frankfurt required France to transfer 500 million gold francs within 30 days after order was established in Paris, 1,000 million francs during 1871, 500 million francs by May 1 1872, and the final 3,000 million francs by March 1874. The bulk of the indemnity was in fact paid in two installments: the first in 1872 and amounting to about 2 billion francs and the second in 1873 and amounting to about 3 billion francs. The final payments was made in September 1873, six months ahead of schedule. The foreign exchange and gold used by France to make the transfer were obtained from two loans of apparently unprecedented magnitude, the first for 2.5 billion francs and the second for about 3.5 billion francs, of which roughly half the subscriptions were foreign and half French”. (I have read elsewhere that it took France same 20 years to pay off these loans).”
    http://www.feldgrau.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=29070

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