CHOSEN PEOPLE
The big idea that shapes England and America
By Clifford Longley. Hodder & Stoughton. £7.99
ISBN 0 340 78657 4
On the opening day of the Battle of the Somme, July 1 1916, the British Army suffered 60,000 casualties. Clifford Longley, former religious affairs correspondent for The Times, traces this disaster not so much to inflexible and incompetent leadership but rather to a hidden but apparently all-pervasive national ideology.
The theory is that at that time Brits held to the unspoken assumption that they were God's own people. Therefore failure was unthinkable. Longley supports this by a quote from General Haig's letter to his wife before the battle: 'I feel that every step in my plan has been taken with divine help', and a real shocker from the then Bishop of London, Winnington-Ingram: 'I think the church can best help the nation first of all by making it realise that it is engaged in a Holy War... Christ died on Good Friday for freedom, honour and chivalry and our boys are dying for the same things... mobilise the nation for a holy war'. More detailed work would ground the claim more securely but Longley's interest is rather in the broad sweep.
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