From ev23@umail.umd.edu Sun Feb 24 07:55:36 2002
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Date: Sun, 24 Feb 2002 10:58:25 -0500
From: Elizabeth Vandiver <ev23@umail.umd.edu>
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To: classics@u.washington.edu
Subject: Re: Simonides & A.D. Hope: query
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JUNESAM@aol.com wrote:

> > If any question why we died,
> >  Tell them, because our fathers lied/
> >
> >  --which has always seemed to me to be a kind of answer to, or
> >  repudiation of,  Simonides (and is truly remarkable, coming from
> >  Kipling's pen).
>
> Not so surprising - when you remember that his
> only son died in the trenches in 1916.

Oh, but I think it *is* surprising, still, from Kipling. I knew about
his son's death, of course; but I would have expected the author of "For
All We Have and Are" to console himself by fierce insistence that the
sacrifice *had* been worthwhile (as many bereaved parents did--the
infamous "Little Mother's" letter springs to mind), rather than to write
"because our fathers lied."

EV


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