Miles Gloriosus

Alberto Gutierrez says: "I do not deny that Americans are constantly boasting about their military might.But to be fair,many others did the same in the past.For instance it was a mixture of ignorance and arrogance that led the Spanish people to belief in a probable victory of Admiral Cervera against the US Navy.

And once a German naval engineer told me that his father and friends, former Luftwaffe pilots,were so good that after the war they taught their fighting abilities to the British. But when I asked why the Battle of England had ended in a German defeat, that was the end of the conversation".

RH:
Alberto is quite right.The miles gloriosus, the boastful war, was a traditional object of dislike and ridicule, The best known example is Shakespeare's Falstaff. Alberto mentions Germany, which, as a nation, constantly boasted about its army, famously ridiculing that of England. As for Spain and the war of 1898, in my studies of Pardo Bazan, I described the dismay she and her generation, that of '98, felt that the glorious Spanish armed forces had been beaten by an upstart nation, the US. Most nations have been guilty of this pride, which usually comes before a fall.