A Solemn Day, Rah Rah, Hooray

A deceptively measured and civilised statement from the Emperor of Japan, expressing "deep remorse" and "utmost grief" for Japanese crimes during the Second World War, stands in marked contrast to the more upbeat and democratic tone of the British celebrations. The commander of the US Pacific fleet may be laying wreaths with officials from the birthplace of Admiral Yamamoto; but Britain will have none of such crass revisionism. Accordingly, Britain's Head Boy and his chums have broken out the historical aircraft and the Rudyard Kipling, and are having a big rah-rah for the British and Commonwealth soldiers who fought a British and Commonwealth world war to preserve the freedoms of the Conservative Party. Those free British conscripts who volunteered to fight the Japanese, of course, were fighting in places like Singapore and Malaya, where the British Empire's values of liberty and democracy were apparent to a most refined and sharp-edged degree. The Japanese Emperor cunningly insinuated that present and future generations should not have to keep apologising for the errors of the past; a view entirely opposed to that of Churchill's heirs, who require the glory of past conquests to point up whatever sheen of adequacy they can scrounge from standing next to a survivor, always provided the survivor isn't foreign.