Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2017 July 5

= July 5 =

Putting your back to a river (military)
I was looking at the Battle of Cowpens article and this passage jumped out at me: He knew untrained militiamen, which composed a large portion of his force, were generally unreliable in battle, and in the past had routed at the first hint of battle and abandoned the regulars. To eliminate that possibility, he defied convention by placing his army between the Broad and Pacolet Rivers, thus making escape impossible if the army was routed. This kind of deployment will be familiar to anyone who's read the Romance of the Three Kingdoms; at several points in the narrative some warlord or another snatches victory from the jaws of defeat by forcing their infantry to fight to the death in this manner. So here are a couple questions: is this an actual recognized tactic? Does it have a name? What are the odds that it was actually used in third-century China? (Everyone I know who's read the novel thinks it's romantic nonsense added after the fact.) -165.234.252.11 (talk) 19:25, 5 July 2017 (UTC)


 * The Russians were known to have used special squads behind the front to capture and execute any deserters. However, note that this doesn't prevent surrender, and, if they think they will be treated better if captured by the enemy than they are treated by their own army, they might well do just that.  Also, this "no retreat" strategy gets a lot of soldiers needlessly killed, and war materiel captured, so it only makes military sense when there's a huge surplus of soldiers and weapons/equipment on your side, and where the captured equipment won't be of use to the enemy and the captured soldiers won't switch sides.  In general, these conditions do not exist, and killing large numbers of your own soldiers needlessly is also politically unacceptable, so retreating to a defensible position (say the other side of that river) is the better military strategy.  StuRat (talk) 20:28, 5 July 2017 (UTC)


 * At the Battle of Stalingrad, "Hitlers orders to stand and fight to the last man, rather than to accept the principle of mobile defence, cost Germany an entire army".  Alansplodge (talk) 22:49, 5 July 2017 (UTC)


 * Good example. ...but there were multiple Hilters ?  So he was cloned ! :-) StuRat (talk) 02:37, 6 July 2017 (UTC)


 * The British Army has made a bit of a virtue of "mobile defence" over the centuries, and what many would look on as ignominious defeats are regarded as great feats-of-arms in Britain. The Retreat to Corunna, the Retreat from Mons and the Retreat to Dunkirk are all remembered with pride by the regiments that participated. General Alan Brooke made his reputation by his "skillful command" of a division during the latter withdrawal. It didn't always work out so well of course, a withdrawal the length of Malaya in 1941 led to the Fall of Singapore when there was nowhere left to retreat to. Alansplodge (talk) 09:34, 6 July 2017 (UTC)


 * They should be proud of the retreat to Dunkirk and subsequent evacuation back to the UK, which preserved much of their army and may well have prevented invasion from NAZI Germany (along with the valiant RAF defense). StuRat (talk) 21:04, 6 July 2017 (UTC)


 * Point of no return has several examples of this, including the Battle of Jingxing and the Battle of Naungyo. Clarityfiend (talk) 22:54, 5 July 2017 (UTC)
 * As added bonuses, the first article calls it as "'fighting a battle with one's back facing a river' (背水一戰)", plus Jingxing was fought in 205 BC. Clarityfiend (talk) 05:53, 6 July 2017 (UTC)


 * This tactic appears somewhere in The Art of War (5th century BC China), so it IS an actual recognized tactic, with 100% chance it was actually used in third-century China. In European warfare this was called "fight back against the wall", part of some sort of "no retreat, no surrender" tactic. Indeed, to properly work, it also require that the soldiers have no perspective to save themselves by surrendering to enemies, only victory or doom; obviously this condition is rarely met, making such fight very hazardous, hence rare.
 * Gem fr (talk) 10:05, 6 July 2017 (UTC)


 * "It is not enough, says Sun Tzu, to render flight impossible... You will not succeed unless your men have tenacity and unity of purpose, and, above all, a spirit of sympathetic cooperation. This is the lesson which can be learned from the SHUAI-JAN" [] ("the shuai-jan is a [mythical] snake that is found in the Ch'ang mountains. Strike at its head, and you will be attacked by its tail; strike at its tail, and you will be attacked by its head; strike at its middle, and you will be attacked by head and tail both"). The first sentence is not a direct quote from The Art of War but a commentary explaining Sun Tzu's somewhat abstruse language. Alansplodge (talk) 16:56, 6 July 2017 (UTC)


 * But this brings up the obvious Q, if the soldiers "have tenacity and unity of purpose, and, above all, a spirit of sympathetic cooperation", then why do you need to block their escape to get them to fight ? ...unless their "unified purpose" is "get the heck out of here !" :-) StuRat (talk) 20:59, 6 July 2017 (UTC)
 * That's because not only the soldiers should have the spirit, but other soldiers must trust them to have it, and undoubtedly closing the rear way is effective in letting everyone know that the only way out is forward, and everyone share this belief. Gem fr (talk) 08:16, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
 * There are other potential tactical benefits to putting your back to any barrier which your enemy cannot easily surmount; it reduces or eliminates the possibility of being outmaneuvered. Obviously this is highly context sensitive: under many circumstances the protection gained is drastically outweighed by the drawbacks (your own lack of maneuverability, the potential for crush and, of course, the very topic here of a lack of escape).  But under some circumstances it could be advisable, especially for a force that is outnumbered and/or one with a defensive advantage at their front lines (heavy cavalry, phalanxes, or fortifications, as three of countless examples) that can only be extended so far along a defensive line; in such cases, the advantages of keeping the line of engagement short, preventing flanking, and sheltering otherwise vulnerable auxiliaries. My point being that, even if the move is taken as a psychological one, it could easily be about making troops feel less, rather than more, vulnerable.  S n o w  let's rap 08:52, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Note that even when this strategy leads to victory, it may well be a Pyrrhic victory, if the casualties sustained are more costly than losing the land would have been. StuRat (talk) 21:11, 6 July 2017 (UTC)


 * Also note that if the enemy knows you do not allow your troops to retreat, they can use this info to wipe you out. The technique is to surround those troops that refuse to retreat, cut their supply lines, then wipe them out.  The best defense to such an attack is to retreat to avoid encirclement, then bring up reinforcements and counter-attack, but refusal to ever retreat makes this defense impossible.


 * Another option for dealing with a well-entrenched enemy that refuses to retreat is to simply bypass them, and go on to attack easier and more critical targets. In the example of the river, just go around the defenders, cross the river in peace, and go on to attack their capital city, etc.  One variation on this plan is for the attacker to leave a small force behind to keep the defenders occupied, so they don't figure out that the main force has bypassed them.  Santa Anna should have used this strategy at the Battle of the Alamo rather than wasting his time, giving his enemy time to mobilize their troops ahead of him.  StuRat (talk) 21:24, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

UK Rail industry
Why is the UK rail industry so political in almost every sense of the word? Political as in heavy interest from government, the public, and media and also political in terms of internal industry politics. 2A02:C7D:B9B7:8700:7C19:57AF:13E3:AAA (talk) 19:33, 5 July 2017 (UTC)


 * It comes down to the importance of the rail network to the British economy, which has meant that the railways could never be allowed to fail. In both World Wars, the Railway Executive Committee took control of the whole British network. At the end of both wars, the system was run down and in need of major investment. The solution after the first war was the Railways Act 1921 which forced the amalgamation of the numerous rail companies into the Big Four. After the second war, the situation was even worse, with bomb damage and machinery being worked almost to destruction. The solution then was Nationalisation in 1948. Those of us who remember British Rail in the 1960s and 1970s will know that it was an imperfect solution and Mrs Thatcher's Conservatives thought that Privatisation of British Rail would be a Good Thing and save the tax payer some cash to boot. Whether this turned out to be true or not is open to debate. Now that nice Mr Corbyn wants to nationalise the whole thing again. Watch this space. Alansplodge (talk) 22:30, 5 July 2017 (UTC)


 * Two clarifications there. First, note that "privatization" often refers to the transfer of an existing public business to the private sector, as was done with British Airways and the Canadian National Railways. What was done to British Rail was a much more far-reaching transformation, with many separate companies created and vertical integration (which had characterized railways more or less since the beginning) now prohibited.  Second, it was John Major's Conservative government that did it, not Thatcher's.   Of course, these points are irrelevant to 2A02:C7D's question. --76.71.5.114 (talk) 09:24, 6 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Ah yes, I stand corrected. Mrs T had it on her wish-list but events intervened. Alansplodge (talk) 09:39, 6 July 2017 (UTC)
 * A further complication was that the ownership of rail infrastructure (track, signalling, most stations) was transferred to another privately owned company called Railtrack, separate from the train operating companies. Safety improvements required after the Hatfield rail crash in 2000 led to Railtrack going into administration in 2001, and its assets and operations were transferred to state-owned Network Rail in 2002. Gandalf61 (talk) 12:16, 6 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Not a further complication, that's part of what I was referring to about "vertical integration". --76.71.5.114 (talk) 19:48, 6 July 2017 (UTC)


 * You'll find evidences of rail industry being "so political" everywhere in the world, not just in UK.
 * while all major industries draw political interest, rail industry draw more that comparable industry of transport (airlines companies, car manufacturers, ...), for 2 mains reasons
 * natural monopoly
 * Externality (railways are usually considered "green", and if some people switch from car to train, this benefit to car users because of reduced traffic, while the reverse is not true)
 * You also may find Rail subsidies and Financing of the rail industry in Great Britain of interest
 * Gem fr (talk) 09:42, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Pledge of Allegiance
Moved from the Science Refdesk for obvious reasons

1. In American schools, at what grade do they start teaching kids to recite the Pledge of Allegiance?

2. Some people told me that only American citizens are required to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Is this true? Do the teachers instruct the non-citizens to remain seated and read a book or something? There's also the practical problem of differentiating who is a citizens and who is not; the teachers aren't USCIS after all. What if the the kids are too young to understand the concept of "citizenship"? Scala Cats (talk) 17:53, 5 July 2017 (UTC)
 * 1)Usually 1st grade. But it wouldn't surprise me if some kindergartens went through it as well.
 * 2)In theory, nobody is required to participate. (See the legal challenges section in the article.) If students or their parents objects, they're supposed to be allowed to sit out.
 * Teachers are not supposed to be singling out non-citizens, and I'm pretty sure it would cause quite a controversy if they did. Perhaps the people who told you that noticed that some students sat out, and came up with their own theory as to why? ApLundell (talk) 18:35, 5 July 2017 (UTC)
 * In theory, yes, people can sit it out if they object. But 99% of the time they just do what the other kids do because they don't want to be picked on.
 * In practice, teacher don't know the citizenship of their pupils. So do they go:
 * 1. "Everyone, recite this."
 * 2. "Everyone, recite this. But if you're not American then you don't have to."
 * 3. "Everyone, recite this. But if you don't want to for whatever reason, you don't have to."
 * I'm interested in what actual instructions the teachers give to their pupils.


 * If the teachers make an exception for non-Americans, then some people will be very pissed because they see it as discrimination and compare it to shit like this.


 * If the teachers don't make an exception for non-Americans, then some people will be very pissed because they see it as the American school system brainwashing their kids. Going by the laws of some country, reciting the American Pledge of Allegiance could be construed as a very serious crime.


 * Meanwhile, the simple public school teacher is caught between a rock and a hard place with seemingly no way to placate both sides. Scala Cats (talk) 19:01, 5 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Non-participation isn't as unusual as you think. There are a few religious groups that don't participate including Jehovah's Witnesses, which aren't uncommon. (It's also not too uncommon for atheists to sit out in protest of the "one nation, under God" line.)
 * The initial instructions from teachers tend to be to explain the pledge on the first day of school, and mention that you don't have to do it if your parents told you not to. No problem.  (For older kids who make their own decisions, no instructions are necessary because they've been in school for years, so it's never the teachers' responsibility to explain why you might not want to do say the pledge.)
 * It's really not an issue unless some teacher decides to be an ultra-patriot and force students to participate. Which happens from time to time.
 * ApLundell (talk) 19:13, 5 July 2017 (UTC)


 * I haven't seen foreign students have an issue with the pledge. The ones that I've seen sit out are Jehovah's Witnesses. They won a suit in 1950 claiming that it was against their protected rights to not pledge allegiance to anything except God. Then, in 1954, "Under God" was added to the pledge, but the Jehovah's Witnesses still sit out. 209.149.113.5 (talk) 19:17, 5 July 2017 (UTC)


 * My mother told me about a case, well after that suit, where a Jehovah's Witness would refuse to say the pledge and the teacher would say he was unpatriotic, ask what was wrong with him, and convinced the kids to join in bullying him socially.
 * It's important to view the Pledge of Allegiance in the context of school prayer - originally, the kids would say one prayer to the Church (the Lord's Prayer) and one prayer to the State. Then the Supreme Court cut out the  Christian one.  The final decision on school prayer was in 1963 (according to the article).
 * By the 1970s teachers were more laid back - kids could object of their own volition, and the line was that you didn't have to say the pledge but you had to stand for it. By that point the context was much weakened (I mean, as a kid you didn't realize you were praying, you were just saying something for no reason) and the thinking of a kid like me was just that if they didn't believe you the first ten times you promised, what's the point of promising again?  It didn't take any hardcore religious reason.  Sometimes I'd say it but twist around the words to something stupid and nobody cared.  But I don't know if kids have that kind of freedom now, given how nasty everything has gotten. Wnt (talk) 19:45, 5 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Constitutionally speaking, no student can be compelled to recite the Pledge. However, the teacher can be compelled to lead it, if it's part of their responsibilities as outlined by the state government. Also, it's not a prayer, possibly aside from the "under God" part (for which you can maybe blame Lincoln). And it used to be more personal: "I pledge allegiance to MY flag..." ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 05:29, 6 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Lincoln? Lincoln died in 1864. Congress added "under God" in 1954 because the mood of the nation at the time seemed to indicate that it would look good come election time. I see no reason to assume that anyone in Congress was thinking about Lincoln at the time. 209.149.113.5 (talk) 12:30, 6 July 2017 (UTC)
 * 1865, actually. And I was referring to his famous Gettysburg Address, in which he is said to have added "under God" to the text at the last moment. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 14:07, 6 July 2017 (UTC)


 * Should this be moved to the humanities desk? — Paleo  Neonate  - 19:59, 5 July 2017 (UTC)


 * Clearly - sorry, I forgot I wasn't there when I answered. Wnt (talk) 20:27, 5 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Photo of US schoolchildren all reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in 1942. None failed to raise his/her arm. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellamy_salute#/media/File:Bellamy_salute_1.jpg Edison (talk) 22:42, 5 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Just another positive thing which the Nazis ruined. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 05:24, 6 July 2017 (UTC)
 * What could possibly be positive about indoctrinating small kids with blind patriotism, with putting propaganda symbolism over reason, and with training people to blindly follow a leader? Unless you want to be an autocratic leader, of course... --Stephan Schulz (talk) 15:07, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Some friends of mine moved to the US (N or S Carolina) about 25 years ago for work. It took them about 6 months to sort out the pledge with the school the children went to - the eventual decision being that they would stand in silence whilst the others were reciting the pledge. Apparently the school took a long time to understand that some people might not want to say it. -- SGBailey (talk) 12:00, 6 July 2017 (UTC)