Yesterday I read Charles Moore’s review of Stephen Spielberg’s latest film, War Horse. Having seen and thoroughly enjoyed the play, which I saw inLondon, 18 months ago, I read the review with some interest. Without going into details,Moore was less than enthusiastic, criticising Spielberg for the gratuitous sentimentality. What was perhaps more interesting, was the comment section, some of which dealt with aspects of the Great War and the vast tragedy attached to it.
One such comment referred to Lord Salisbury, who as Prime Minister at the end of the 19th century, had bent over backwards to avoid war, not just with Germany, but with the US as well. I was reminded of a comment I had recently in a book, Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War, by US Republican Pat Buchanan, an excerpt of which is here. Surprisingly, for a Republican American of Irish extraction, Buchanan is very sympathetic to theBritish Empire and the benefits it brought to the world. It is worth reading the excerpt, just to hear what he has to say about, and how critical he is of American icons, Thomas Jefferson (‘all men are equal’) and Woodrow Wilson, (‘the right to self-determination’). What he said about Lord Salisbury also took me by surprise. He describes Salisbury as an appeaser, though rather than being critical, he admires him for it.
“In the summer of 1895, London received a virtual ultimatum from secretary of state Richard Olney, demanding that Great Britain accept U.S. arbitration in a border dispute between British Guiana andVenezuela. Lord Salisbury shredded Olney’s note like an impatient tenured professor cutting up a freshman term paper. But President Cleveland demanded that Britain accept arbitration—or face the prospect of war with theUnited States. The British were stunned by American enthusiasm for a war over a patch of South American jungle, and incredulous. America deployed two battleships to Britain’s forty-four. Yet Salisbury took the threat seriously: “A war with America…in the not distant future has become something more than a possibility.”
“Isolation is much less dangerous than the danger of being dragged into wars which do not concern us. Lord Salisbury,1896.”
Now there are many who will describe Pat Buchanan as a ‘right wing, religious anti-Semitic bigot’ and with some justification. He ran for President when I was living in theUS, and I watched him on various TV programmes, so I have some sympathy for that view. But at the same time, he does have the courage of his convictions and is not afraid to say what he thinks, some of which definitely needs saying. Most recently, “If Kagan is confirmed, Jews, who represent less than 2 percent of the U.S.population, will have 33 percent of the Supreme Court seats. Is this the Democrats’ idea of diversity?”
In any event, I went to Buchanan’s Wikipedia site where I read more about him. That took me to a spat that he had with columnist William F Buckley, an interesting chap himself and from there to H L Menken, also worth reading about. Mencken it was satirised the famous Scopes Trial, which he called the Monkey Trial.
Seeing how the Chariot carries few, if any creationists, I am sure that you will all have heard of the Scopes Trial.
“Scopes Monkey Trial—was a landmark American legal case in 1925 in which high school science teacher, John Scopes, was accused of violating Tennessee’s Butler Act which made it unlawful to teach evolution.”
Given the nature of it, one can understand why it was open to satire. What I did not know was that the whole thing had been set up to test the law and that it was the prosecutors who were the instigators, not because they agreed with the law, but because they wanted to have it repealed. That was one reason. The other was that they hoped the publicity of such a trial would bring fortune to the little county.
“In Dayton, the Hicks brothers were regulars at the F.E. Robinson Drugstore, where the town’s professionals often gathered to socialize and discuss the issues of the day. In May 1925, the Hicks brothers and other regulars became involved in a discussion over an American Civil Liberties Union advertisement seeking a challenge to the Butler Act, a recently-enacted state law barring the teaching of the Theory of Evolution. Realizing the publicity such a case would bring to Rhea County, the group— who would eventually become known as the “drugstore conspirators”— decided to engineer a case that would test the constitutionality of the Butler Act. The group recruited local physics teacher John T. Scopes— a friend— to admit to teaching the Theory of Evolution. One of the conspirators, George Rappleyea, swore out a warrant for Scopes’ arrest on May 5, and charges were filed the following day.”
The prosecution won the day and Scopes was found guilty as had been their plan. They now hoped that the case would progress to the Supreme Court which would bring even more publicity to the town. However, the presiding judge had made a technical mistake. On the defendant being found guilty the judge had issued Scopes with a fine of $100. On appeal, the new judge declared that only a jury can issue a fine higher than $50 and since the judge had not consulted the jury. Thus Scopes escaped on a technicality. The new judge went on to state that since Scopes was no longer living in Tennessee, it was no longer in anybody’s interest to pursue the case further, much to the dismay of those seeking to have the law overturned.
So where does Sue fit in? Well, one of the ‘drugstore conspirators’ and a co-prosecutor was a man, yes, a man called Sue Hicks. He was a fine lawyer who prosecuted over 800 murder suspects.
“Hicks’ oddly feminine first name may have inspired the song, “A Boy Named Sue”, which Johnny Cash first performed in 1969. The song’s author, Shel Silverstein, attended a judicial conference in Gatlinburg,Tennessee— at which Hicks was a speaker— and apparently got the idea for the song title after hearing Hicks introduced. While Cash said he was unaware that Silverstein had any one person in mind when he wrote the song, he did send Hicks two records and two autographed pictures signed, “To Sue, how do you do?””
The song does contain the line, ‘Well, it was Gatlinburg in mid-July’ so there does seem to be truth behind the theory. I have been to Gatlinberg. It is the most tacky town on earth, though set in a very pretty part of the Appalachian Mountains, a stone’s throw from Dollywood!
Hicks was named by his father in honour of his mother who died in childbirth. He maintained that it was not given to him make him tough as is the reason given in the song.
Boadicea's Chariot 
This is what I find so dynamic about blogging, you can suddenly read something which takes your mind in a totally unexpected direction, manna from heaven if, like me, you are looking at a blank screen seeking inspiration for an aricle I have write.
Thanks Sipu, great blog, interesting facts that have helped me out.
Thanks OMG. The difference between you and me though is that your work is probably remunerative!
Hi Sipu.
A very interesting meander. I read the review by Charles Moore, and then having watched the trailer, I decided I couldn’t bear to watch the film. I’m hopelessly sentimental about horses, and just watching the trailer had me in floods of tears.
Can’t bear to re-read Black Beauty either; hopeless really.
Hello Ara. The play was incredibly well done and certainly full of weepy moments. At the end, there was a great deal of sniveling going on. As we were getting up to leave, my lady companion got into a fit of giggles over the fact that the two ladies in front were sobbing fairly vocally. Given that the horse(s) were in reality only wooden puppets, it was quite a remarkable degree of reality that was achieved.
I have no intention of seeing this film.
My father was in WWI as a young man, signed up in 1914. He was part of a gun crew that was being shipped to Gallipoli. At the time they were not allowing abroad those under 18 (FYO they could not execute them for cowardice or mutiny, if and as!) He was hauled off the troop ship by a sharp eyed sergeant major.
His friends on the crew plus their 6 horses took a direct hit, the bits were not collected. To his dying day he kept a tiny photo of the whole lot of them in his wallet.
Three years later he had a horse shot and killed under him whilst riding despatches, it nearly killed him too and left him disabled for the rest of his life.
I believe that nearly a million horses died, mostly unpleasantly in WWI, very few ever came home.
So, not a subject I find easy, neither did my father.
Equally I really couldn’t watch with any degree of equanimity a thoroughbred being used to pull a plough.
It was my understanding that they took all the riding and carriage horses but left most of the draught animals. Can anyone corroborate that?
Having seen a couple of hunting accidents in my youth where horses and riders both died I can’t see such would make a very elevating movie and certainly not for me!
This business of giving men women’s names is prevalent in the Southern half of the USA. Marion comes to mind, spelt differently to Marian but in an uncouth Arkansas accent quite impenetrable at first hearing!
Equally Francis/Frances, not that that is unknown in the UK, but rare.
Marion Morrissey was John Wayne’s real name, no wonder he changed it!
Personally I blame Wilson for causing WWII, it was at his insistence the settlement of the Treaty of Versailles was so unworkable. Admittedly the Frogs were being bloody ridiculous as usual and it had dragged on for months, maybe it would have been better if it had dragged on even further. It couldn’t have been any worse!
Good blog.
Hi CO, thanks for all that. How horrid for your dad. My dad was born in 1914 so was too young, but my maternal grandfather was at Gallipoli. He got shot in the groin and lost 50% of his manhood, but went on to sire 6 children and many, many grand and great grand children. Imagine if he had survived intact. He had also fought in the Boer War.
I am not particularly sentimental when it comes to animals, but even I have a thing about horses. They are such magnificent creatures. My father’s family were big horse people and my dad was fine horseman. I am not sure I will see the film, but the play really was worth it. The models were made here in Cape Town.
Interesting, Sipu, and I don’t doubt the emotional impact of the “wooden puppets”. I probably could just about cope with that, and by all accounts it was amazing. But not the film, for just the reasons that CO has well described. Horses and dogs are quite special, and I absolutely cannot contemplate the carnage of humans as well as horses in WW1.
I believe they did take most of the carriage and riding horses, but like Christina, I don’t know this to be true.
There is the other thought, that may or may not be true, which is that the French learned to eat horseflesh purely because it was available at that time. Another idea I find distinctly uncomfortable.
I ate horse carpaccio once at my brother-in-law’s birthday party in Italy. I only discovered afterwards what it was but it wasn’t too bad and I did not throw up afterwards.
The thing about death is that one can become fairly immune to it, especially if there is no direct emotional link. I mean seeing lots of dead bodies, animal or human is shocking at first, but as long as you do not know them personally, it can become relatively easy to deal with. I think part of the horror of the WW1 was that so many people joined their ‘pals’ in their various units, so as CO said, whole groups of friends got wiped out. Horrible for the survivors.
I know that Rhodesia, which provided many soldiers to in both wars, arranged for its men to fight in different units. The country could not afford to lose too many of its youth in one go as happened to whole communities in England.
I agree that the stage production of this story was very good: in my view excellent and moving, due in great part to its theatricality – the drama of the whole thing very well thought out and choreographed. The stage set was impressive, the art work and how it was incorporated into the play and scenery, the music, the puppetry and the singing all complemented the acting.
On BBCs ‘Front Row’ I heard the film pulled to shreds. I had already decided not to go – but none of the critics liked it, for all the overblown sentimentality.
I should stop reading this site!
Sipu I have carefully cultivated the art over a lifetime of being able to shelve the worst memories. Sometimes something jerks them back with a vengeance, you just have!
I shall never forget the pyres of burning cows in my youth on my way home from school. They belonged to our neighbours, it was a very big dairy herd with followers, several hundred animals. I knew them rather well.
Foot and mouth destroyed them all, they burnt for weeks, billowing black clouds of roasting beef and burning hair and hides, not to be recommended for the faint hearted.
Damned me, 40 years later a rerun, when the boy was in Chemo and was occasionally allowed home I drove up from the Towy valley in Carms through Abergavenny and Gwent to Brum and back through the valley of death of pyres of more cows burning for a good 50 miles. Visions of Dante’s inferno is not exactly the most restorative sight for one’s dying progeny.
I tend to regard my imminent descent to Hell with a degree of sang froid as I have always thought it was here on earth. I do think that such films appeal to those who have been fortunate enough to have been untouched so far by the vicissitudes of existence. If you have seen it or the equivalent, that is quite enough.
I know that nothing on earth would have got my father to such a performance.
He fainted at the sound of skirling bagpipes, having been seconded to a Highland regiment in WWI, 50 years later at the Aboyne Highland Games, it bought the trenches straight home to him.
Sound of Music would have been more his style!
I am sorry CO, I did not intend to be insensitive with my ‘chirp’ that one gets used to these things. I never saw the pyres that you did so cannot imagine what that must have been like. But as a child growing up on a farm, I saw a lot of dead animals. I killed a few myself, I somewhat regret to say. In the army I saw human bodies with their heads blown off and I like most people I have had my fair share of tragedy. I do not try to blank out the memory of these things, I just try to blank out the emotion. Life is a bugger, get used to it, is my philosophy.
But mostly I was thinking about the surgeons and para-medics who deal with the carnage on the roads and elsewhere, especially in this country. A friend of mine was a surgeon working on one of the mines (I am in 2 mines about this). There is an expression we had in Zimbabwe, ‘going mine munt’. It refers to workers there who get blindingly drunk and behave with utmost violence and foolishness. When casualties come to hospital, alive or dead the injuries that have been inflicted on them are truly staggering, sometimes as a result of work but more often following a drunken brawl. My friend left to change careers because he said it had become boring and routine.