Sub-lieutenant Roy Brown (Canadian Army Air Corps) meets his squadron leader for the first time, in a clumsy, uncomfortable introduction. The squadron commander notes his flat, unaccented English and asks him if he is American. Brown replies, "Canadian", and the commander comments, "Canadian? Well that's half-American, isn't it?" To which, Brown retorts, "Some would say it's half-British".
Wow, talk about insults, because Canadians insist on being distinct from Americans and more, identify themselves closer to their British origins than Americans. Canadians are proud to be more in line with the British social customs of gentlemanly behavior, compared to the crasser, uncouth, country-like Americans. Buuuuutttt...oddly enough, Roy Brown's behavior in the British squadron officer's mess is anything but Canadian civiized gentlemanly behavior. He's abrupt and even if not rude is more aggressive and sounds more like a cowboy American hell bent on killing the Indian (German) foe. Brown totally rejects the archaic notions of 19th century chivalry. He sounds like the American generals, Sherman and Sheridan, from the American Civil War, who believed that the only good Indian is a dead Indian. Brown feels the same way about the Germans. A typical Canadian gentleman of the time period should have fit in well with the British.
But Brown was in keeping with the changing ruthless nature of 20th century warfare, which would only progressively regress more savage and destructive into World War II. The savagery of it all may have caused the world to step back and maybe that's what prevented World War III because no one wanted to go through that again at the end of the 20th century.
Brown was not alone. There were Germans who felt the same way, notably Herman Goering. Then you had men like Richtofen who fell somewhere in between. Richtofen bought into the new culture of 20th century warfare which was victory or death, but still maintained some feeling of mercy that fighting men should kill the enemy whenever possible, no quarter, but at the same time, not be murderer.
Brown's retort is meant to point out the insulting nature of trying to quantify the Canadian national identity as halves of anyone else's country. Corman seems to be playing up to the nationalistic zeitgeist of the period... perhaps he, too, was an unabashed follower of 'Trudeaumania'. Many were in those days.
While it is true that some Canadians identify their CULTURE as partially belonging to the British, there are many who do not; ever heard of a little place called Quebec? Nearly a quarter of the country's population lives there, and do not refer to themselves as 'Half-british'. Nor would anyone else foolishly suggest it to them.
The portrayal of the Canadian character as somehow intrinsically more gentlemanly (sexist?) or 'civilized', is largely the product of a shtick... of beer ads, situation comedies, and American motion picture screenplays; that, and the lone historical fact that Canada fought ONE LESS WAR to achieve its current status as a sovereign, independent state somehow makes Canadians more 'civilized'. Canadians have massacred and sidelined aboriginal populations in the very best traditions of all the world's other 'civilized' states; we have imprisoned and disenfranchised women, foreign nationals, and members of distinctly differing ethnicities, in times of war, and in times of peace, whenever and wherever the appeasement of mob mentality required it; when nobody's looking, we beat seal pups to death with cricket bats, and contaminate our wetlands with petroleum (literally pouring oil on already-troubled waters!). We have thrown bombs at babies, spit upon and burned other people's national insigniae, and we even throw our sweaters onto hockey arenas, as our need to express ourselves dictates. So much for 'civilized'.
If Americans went to the Great War to fight 'Indians' rather than 'Germans', it is not reflected in the popular culture of the time (Who was it they were going to send running, in the song 'Over There'? Surely not 'Indians'). I'm fairly certain words like 'Hun' and 'Heinie' were not referring to the native populations of North America. That Americans were once enthusiastic and effective murderers of these populations only underscores their 'civilized' natures... in other words, no less 'civilized' than Canadians of the same time period. Though General Sheridan was credited with a particularly negative sentiment concerning the aboriginals of the Great Plains, he denied it to his dying day; he was thus either a craven liar and genocidist, or merely a man who gained a belated sense of 'civility'. In any case his attitudes concerning his own countrymen were scarcely any different, as he was enthusiastically murdering them long before he turned his sights on the 'Indian'. So much for Sheridan.
The motif of antique versus modern attitudes towards warfare is, of course, a central theme of the film... just like EVERY OTHER FILM about World War One since 'All Quiet On The Western Front' (1930). That Brown is assigned the modern mentality, as well as a healthy contempt for the trappings associated with chivalric battlefield codes and traditions, simply reflects his middle-class upbringing in Ontario. Brown was a level-headed and uncomplicated young man who wanted to get sufficiently educated that he might take over the Family Business; to that end he took matriculation courses in Edmonton, clear on the other, less-'civilized' part of the country (where we throw sweaters!). Von Richtofen, on the other hand, was a dangerously displaced 19th-century dandy who had a special room decorated with the remains of the planes of his victims. When he wasn't out killing fellow europeans, as well as Canadians, Australians, and New Zealanders, he liked to spend his time killing animals, whose remains he would also duly put on display. So much for chivalry.
Neither of these men got along terribly well with the respective societies of their times. This was a point of the film, and is also a poignant point of history. The War spun out to its dismal conclusion, and those societies proclaimed that another like it would never be fought again. That idea lasted twenty-one years. At last check, World War III has NOT been prevented. Canadians, when not throwing sweaters and paddling seal pups, provide Americans with the fissile materials to build yet more nuclear bombs; we are thus Aiders and Abettors of an as-yet-unhappened Apocalypse. Should that dark day come, some of the bombs are going to have 'Made In Canada' printed on them (or perhaps 'Fabrique au Canada'). So much for War.
Von Richtofen wrote that he enjoyed watching planes fall to the ground in flames. He liked the pretty colours, and he liked the feeling of having the air around him 'free', having exterminated the offending life-form challenging his Personal Space. In this respect he was an avid buyer into the modern sensibility... just like Goering, and just like Brown. Killing in war is a terrible, wonderful, all-empowering act, that elevates the minds of the young, the naive, the pitiably impressionable people we send to do it. That's why we send them. If there is anything we can use to tie Von Richtofen and Brown, Sherman and Sheridan, Indians and Germans, The Great War and World War III, into a nice tight bundle, it is this: War is Hell, and the worse we make it, the sooner it will be over. So much for Sherman, who never denied his sentiment, to his dying day.
Canadians have massacred and sidelined aboriginals? Where and when? One hears nothing of Canadian versions of Sand Creek 1864 or Camp Grant 1871. I always thought Native Canadians got off lighter than their Native American neighbours.