Re: >Re: DOMINION INSTITUTE --State funeral for last war
I think you might be mixing many things together here. Following orders, how the world works (and the questions about what would be included in that "world," and what one would mean by "works"), personal experiences and historical assessments on what those things mean, are not linear or objective. To proclaim that Canada became a nation on the basis of such events is just that, a claim. These things are defined after the fact. In this case, many years after the fact (the fact being the war itself). In other words, it is not a product of the war, not a product generated immediately after the war, not a product of consensus of the soldiers involved; but a product of historical selection by some historians a long time after the conclusion of that war.
Babel, you have suggested in a general way that Candian "troops" were part of the command system "controlled" by the British. But as I pointed out, and you echoed, it was British command. Canadians did not bridle at this thought because they were not making distinctions between who they were fighting with: the British. Historically speaking, there is nothing wrong with that. That is what they went to do, that is what they did, and by many historical accounts, what some did very well.
But as for a unique "Canadian" experience, again, this is a subjective assessment. One can presume that there were unique French experiences, British experiences, German experiences, Australian, Austrian, Turkish and Russian experiences of the war as well (to name just a few). Within this narrow national definition of experiences are the even more varied personal experiences of the war, what went on and what it meant. To somehow conclude that all Canadians went to war with the same ideas in mind, and came home with the same "nation-building" experience is an excessive conclusion. It is not born out by the facts, either, as the nationalist conclusions are a much more recent artifact.
Take one example: there are often significant differences of opinion about the war between those who volunteered to go to war and those who were drafted. On the basis of that contentious issue, you can actually find historians who suggest that opposition to the war and the draft in Canada was a greater stake to forging Canadian independence from Britain than going off to war to fight for Britain. Many of those who did not want to get drafted saw the war as a colonial conflict that they had nothing to do with. At that time these would have been considered the sentiments of traitors, not a declaration of independence. This feeling would have been due to the fact that Canadians who supported the war knew that they were fighting for Britain (or British causes, ideals, and so on, ideals and beliefs that they shared), and concluded the war with the same ideas pretty much intact.
The idea that Canada, or an independent Canadian nation, was forged during the First World War is not a fact of history, but a matter of how people choose to look back at that war long after its conclusion. It is a subjective assessment that is the result of compiling a limited set of events, and concluding with one broad declaration about what those events might mean.