FROM THE EDITORS

• Main Authors: Abel Esterhuyse, Ian Liebenberg
• Format: Article
• Language: Afrikaans
• Published: Stellenbosch University 2011-08-01
• Series: Scientia Militaria
• Online Access: http://scientiamilitaria.journals.ac.za/pub/article/view/86

Editors of academic journals are confronted with choices and trade-offs.<br />A wide variety of factors are influencing the choice of articles and themes for a<br />particular edition. Scientia Militaria, the South African Journal for Military Studies,<br />is a journal with a particular focus and covers a wide spectrum of military-related<br />topics. As an academic discipline, Military Science, though, is characterised by its<br />interdisciplinary nature. This interdisciplinary nature is once again demonstrated<br />through the variety of articles in this particular edition.<br />Prof. William Dean from the US Air Command and Staff contributed an<br />interesting article on morale among French colonial troops on the Western Front<br />during the First World War. He pointed out that the traditional images of the French<br />Army on the Western Front during the First World War have been that of the<br />grizzled yet determined French peasant or worker. However, recent research<br />portrays a different view of the French Army on the Western Front. Dean’s article<br />provides an overview of the morale of the 600 000 men from across the French<br />empire who served in the frontline and in logistics units in France. Bringing these<br />colonial soldiers to a foreign country and culture to fight in a new type of horrific<br />war was strenuous, while at the time perhaps not contentious. The article provides<br />an impressionistic overview of the morale of these colonial forces in France. The<br />author argues conclusively that the French colonial empire paid a high price in the<br />war. The colonies were economically and demographically dislocated and the<br />returning colonial veterans of the First World War played a part in the growing<br />nationalism of the inter-war years. Their experiences and views contributed towards<br />the setting of the stage for post-1945 revolutions in the French empire.