"Lions led by donkeys" is a phrase popularly used to describe the British infantry of World War I and to condemn the generals who commanded them. The contention is that the brave soldiers (lions) were sent to their deaths by incompetent and indifferent leaders (donkeys). The phrase was the source of the title of one of the most scathing examinations of British First World War generals, The Donkeys - a study of the 1915 Western Front offensives - by politician and writer of military histories Alan Clark. The book was representative of much First World War history produced in the 1960s and was not outside the mainstream—Basil Liddell Hart vetted Clark's drafts—and helped to form the predominant popular view of the First World War (in the English-speaking world) in the decades that followed. However, the work and its viewpoint of incompetent military leaders have both been subject to attempts at revisionism.
Read more about Lions Led By Donkeys: Origins of The Phrase, Attribution To First World War German or British Officers, Popular Culture, Criticism of The Characterisation of Military Leaders As Donkeys
Famous quotes containing the words lions and/or led:
“When lions paint pictures men will not always be represented as conquerors. When women translate laws, constitutions, bibles and philosophies, man will not always be the declared heard of the church, the state, and the home.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton 1815–1902, U.S. women’s rights activist, author, editor. The Revolution (August 13, 1868)
“The ceaseless, senseless demand for original scholarship in a number of fields, where only erudition is now possible, has led either to sheer irrelevancy, the famous knowing of more and more about less and less, or to the development of a pseudo- scholarship which actually destroys its object.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)