As a former student at Clifton College (Henry Newbolts school) this poem has special sentiment for me, for 'The Close' is where I spent the best years of my life. However I think anyone can agree this is a truly insightful and beautiful poem.

This poem to me is scarily insightful of the attitude that lead to huge losses of the First World War. Therefore I find it lacking in humanity and it is naive to the effects of war and detached from reality.

So how do you find it detached from humanity?
If anything, it illustrates it.
The fact that there is something more than the be-ribboned coat and the season's fame is something that can make humanity great. It shows why men were prepared to fight for what they saw as the greater good - for the acknowledgement that their deeds would live on.

Please tell me you were just trolling...

While Newbolt references the far-flung colonial battlefields that would have been familiar to his late Victorian readers, he describes an attitude, or approach, toward life that is equally applicable to sport, business, or, indeed, any of the myriad competitive arenas where individuals strive for success. The stakes may be serious (death itself), but he places value on this attitude, the "joyful mind" which equips his torch-bearers with both a greater chance of success and the type of style or dash which was viewed as the hallmark of the English gentleman of his day. The fact that this sort of enthusiasm can be perverted by politicians does not lessen its value.

"This poem to me is scarily insightful of the attitude that lead to huge losses of the First World War. Therefore I find it lacking in humanity and it is naive to the effects of war and detached from reality."

How much do you actually know about the First World War? Blackadder may be hilarious, but it is not realistic or a historical document and Secondary School education, with its focus on "how everyone thought war was lovely, then thought it was horrid and wrote poems about it" leaves a lot to be desired in terms of developing a real understanding of the War and developments in terms of changing strategy and tactics.
Perhaps you should procure the following book by Chichele Professor of the History of War Hew Strachan; the book is called "The First World War" and is a surprisingly short volume but still does much to dismiss the old clichés about silly old generals and poetic privates, and the myth of futility. That myth which tells fifteen year old children that the War changed nothing and just led to the deaths of millions in trenches and craters, this war brought down empires, fostered revolutions and laid the groundwork for the modern world, for good or ill, it changed everything.
And lastly it is not a poem naïve to the effects of war, it mentions the “sand of the desert sodden red”, what do you think it is sodden red with? It is “red with the wreck of the square that broke”, hmm reminds me of “Fuzzy Wuzzy”…

The images summoned here are of course not of the First World War, but of Rorke's Drift, or Khartoum, or the Khyber Pass, and such. The sentiment expressed is exactly that: a sentiment. C. S. Lewis said it best:

The glory of the old sentiment was that while it could steel men to the utmost endeavour, it still knew itself to be a sentiment. Wars could be heroic without pretending to be Holy Wars. The hero’s death was not confused with the martyr’s. And (delightfully) the same sentiment which could be so serious in a rear-guard action could also in peacetime take itself as lightly as all happy loves often do. It could laugh at itself. Our older patriotic songs cannot be sung without a twinkle in the eye; later ones sound more like hymns. Give me “The British Grenadiers” ("with a tow-row-row-row") any day rather than “Land of Hope and Glory”.
-- C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves

It is difficult to add much to the superb quote from CS Lewis but I think there is more to this approach to life than in being credited. To "play up, play up and play the game" means to understand that life is not too serious, follows rules, has fairness and justice as its base and is played for the team (or country) not the individual. Many accuse this poem of being an old fashioned evocation of empire but I think the values are fundementally Britain at its very best.

As an Indian schoolboy raised on large dollops of Edwardian writings (the old English textbooks had not yet been replaced!), this is one of the few that stands out. The way we saw it (though an Indian lens) was "fight the battle in front of you as best you can" -- the outcome, good or bad, is the next generations responsibility.

"This poem to me is scarily insightful of the attitude blah blah blah blah blah..."

PoMo bullshit.

If there was ever a better sentiment than "Play up! and play the game" I can't think of one. Indeed, one could live one's life by this sentiment alone, and not be short-changed.

As for the Great War: if there is any blame to be attached, it should be laid at the feet of those who persisted in thinking of war as brute force rather than of war as technology. Just as armored heavy cavalry fell to longbowmen at Agincourt, so human waves fell to machine-guns in 1914-1918 -- and a pox on the war planners who didn't get the parallels.

That's not the "attitude" referred to in Newbolt -- that's tragically short-sighted planning and tactics.

Well...

War is war and everybody practises it. The Sudanese were at war. The Maoris had wars long before Botany Bay.

Hardly can something be more human than war (however animals other delve into it too).

Louise, how do you think wherever in the web you live in came about? Some war there was.

As for the Great War, think again.

"As for the Great War: if there is any blame to be attached, it should be laid at the feet of those who persisted in thinking of war as brute force rather than of war as technology. Just as armored heavy cavalry fell to longbowmen at Agincourt, so human waves fell to machine-guns in 1914-1918 --"

The great killer, as in every war, was artillery, not machine guns. But, to the extent that the Infantry killed, it was the MG and nomt the rifle, that did most of the execution. As usual, the losers learned the most
(The BEF and French Army of September 1939 looked, thought and even spoke - the slang was still the same ie: "Archie" rather than "Flak" - strikingly like it was Novemver 12, 1918) and their infantry squad was organized and trained to support the MG34 or 42.

There's a lot of people who refuse to accept that fact - particularly civilian target shooters who imagine that punching holes in papaer has something to do with suppressing targets on the battlefield (Step one - find the target. Writers consistently comment about the "Empty battlefield").

Now before you get up on yer hind legs in rage, I make this statement with experience. I shoot competitvely, was on my school's marksmanship teams in high school and college and have 25 years of Army experience behind me. Basic marksmanship training on known distance ranges is just that, just the beginning, not the end all and be all - even for a rifleman.

"... and a pox on the war planners who didn't get the parallels."

That's not the "attitude" referred to in Newbolt -- that's tragically short-sighted planning and tactics."

Sorry, but that's the old "Lions led by donkeys" myth and most historians say that it is just that, a myth.

In defense of my professional ancestors, I never served yet in a unit whose TOE included a 'Ball, Crystal, Magic: One each" What seeems blindingly obvious a century later was not such in 1910.

Take tanks says this old Armor officer. Yes, as Aussie had proposed a tank like vehicle prior to the war to have it rejected. But no one expected siege warfare (which is what the Western Front was) on the massive scale that actually occured due to the unprecedented number of troops per mile of front (due to the "nation in arms" concept of the French revolutionaries where all owed service to the state, the Prussian reserve system which was adoptred by everyone except Britain and the Industrial Revolution which alloed massive quantities of armaments to be built and provided an economy that allowed workers to be play part time soldier in tome of opeace and srve at the front in time of war .

Recent history SEEMED to suggest a war of manouver. Port Arthur? That was explicitly a siege and so was Petersburg.

Infernal Combustion technology was crude, tempoermental and hardly reliable. THere was no relaibe way of communitaing between - or even within a tank (kicks, shoves and lots of finger pointing). Internal conditions of noise, heat, toxic fumes and exposure to dangerous machinery would give a modern health inspector the vapors and severely degraded crew performance (crews were exhausted after a short period).

Yes, a obscure Polish banker had predicted with startling accuracy what actually occurred, but come on. Polish? Banker? Be serious! How many bankers would have listened to a soldier preicting economic collapse in 1929?

Miltary men are often accused of being conervative in their thinking. Since they are betting mens' lives on their decisions (Quote from admiral William F Halsey on VJ Day, "Thank God I will never again send another man out to die") taking what has worked in the past and extrapolating it is justified.

Sorry for the lecture, but my PhD is in History and my thesis was on 20th Century military technology and its influence on tactics and vice versa (did two tours as an instructor in military history) so this whole question hits pretty close to home.

Col Beausaber

PS: Best book I ever read on the subject of what it was like to serve in the BEF was "Eye Deep in Hell" by John Ellis

http://www.amazon.com/Eye-Deep-Hell-Trench-Warfare-World/dp/0801839475