{"id":4499,"date":"2004-07-15T11:39:46","date_gmt":"2004-07-15T11:39:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=4499"},"modified":"2004-07-15T11:39:46","modified_gmt":"2004-07-15T11:39:46","slug":"dulce-et-decorum-est","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=4499","title":{"rendered":"dulce et decorum est"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last week in Burgundy, we noticed that every single town had erected a stone cross with the names of its dead from 1914-18 and 1939-45. Even a village of 50 people (according to our Michelin guide) might list a half dozen killed. A few names were marked ?d?port?taken east to die in slave labor or death camps. Overall, France lost <a href=\"http:\/\/www.emory.edu\/ENGLISH\/LostPoets\/Casualties.html\">1,368,000 men <\/a>in the First World War and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.worldwar2database.com\/html\/frame5.htm\">563,000 people <\/a>(civilians and combatants) in the Second. That counts only the dead, not those grievously wounded, psychologically broken, widowed, orphaned, or deprived of young sons. France lost <a href=\"http:\/\/www.richthofen.com\/ww1sum\/\">11 percent <\/a>of its entire population in the Great War, compared to a death rate of 0.37% in the United States. Even in World War II, the French lost twice as many people as we did, out of a much smaller population.<\/p>\n<p>And then I think of the people, my fellow Americans, who claimed that France opposed our invasion of Iraq because they lacked the courage for war; the French were ?surrender monkeys,? in the phrase that certain hawks borrowed from ?The Simpsons.? These people remind me of the ones Siegfried Sassoon described in ?Base Details?:<\/p>\n<p>IF I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath,<\/p>\n<p>I?d live with scarlet Majors at the Base,<\/p>\n<p>And speed glum heroes up the line to death.<\/p>\n<p>You?d see me with my puffy petulant face,<\/p>\n<p>Guzzling and gulping in the best hotel,<\/p>\n<p>Reading the Roll of Honour. ?Poor young chap,?<\/p>\n<p>I?d say??I used to know his father well;<\/p>\n<p>Yes, we?ve lost heavily in this last scrap.?<\/p>\n<p>And when the war is done and youth stone dead,<\/p>\n<p>I?d toddle safely home and die?in bed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last week in Burgundy, we noticed that every single town had erected a stone cross with the names of its dead from 1914-18 and 1939-45. Even a village of 50 people (according to our Michelin guide) might list a half dozen killed. A few names were marked ?d?port?taken east to die in slave labor or [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-iraq-and-democratic-theory"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4499\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}