To hope for a commission, colonials (not just Maltese) had to resign their local commissions and re-enlist in England starting from the lowest rungs of the ladder.

Having said that, there is ample evidence that colonials were refused commissions on the grounds of what today we’d call racial prejudice, but which back then were totally acceptable tenets.

There is also evidence to show that Maltese were also reluctant to serve abroad because they were what today we’d call ‘mammoni’ or that reluctance to stray far from mama’s skirts.

If I m not mistaken a representative of that small group of men who resigned a local commission to be able to enlist in a British regiment in the UK and serve on the Western Front was Major….the name is escaping me…. Who later became the local leader of the branch of Oswald Mosely’s B.U.F

It is not Australia’s job to remember the Maltese participation. It’s Malta’s.

The Great Siege (no mention of the Ottoman Empire)
Meta mitna ghall-barrani (no mention of the Axis powers)
Kif Mintoff kecca l-Inglizi (no mention of how he begged them to stay)
Kif Borg Olivier akkwista l-Independenza (no mention of the post-war decolonisation process)

Feel free to add to the list.

Thank you, Daphne.

I am thoroughly sick of his bias and find it difficult to accept – in fact I don’t – that he is given the position he has.

1. Today’s is a commemoration and not a celebration. One does not celebrate the anniversary of a disaster in which many died and many were wounded.

2. This is not a discussion about Armenia and never was. It is a discussion about Malta’s failure to be present at today’s commemoration despite Malta having played such an important role in the Gallipoli Campaign being commemorated today. You are the one who introduced the subject of Armenia.

3. You have spuriously, and with no evidence at all, decided that I favour Turkey’s stance on Armenia. You have done this on the basis that I wrote a post about Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando’s objections to Turkey joining the EU whereas he favours Israel joining. You failed to notice that in that post I did not give my own view as to whether I favour Turkey joining the EU or not. You jumped to conclusions, missing a comment I made further down that I am ambivalent about Turkey joining the EU, but it’s not for cultural or religious reasons.

4. I read history and do so extensively, as somebody formally trained in the discipline and not as somebody in search of evidence to prove my bigoted theories and biases. I agree with most historians that the Armenian massacre constituted genocide, but this is on the basis of evidence and not on the basis of bigoted fear of Turks as in your case.

5. Turkey is not ‘my best friend’. Countries cannot be a person’s best friend. The country in which I feel most at home, more even than in my own country (largely due to the people and culture here in Malta), is Britain. It couldn’t be more different to Turkey.

6. If I were petty I would not be running this website. I would be playing bridge or tennis and gossiping over coffee, like the vast majority of women of my age and background. Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando is not petty, in any case. He is a paranoid obsessive, which is vastly different as it is a psychiatric condition, whereas pettiness is merely a minor character flaw.

7. It is not the disastrous campaign itself which is being commemorated today, but those who died and suffered as a result.

A history book in Maltese? That’s erudition, not history.

The story of Malta’s British period written by somebody who is virulently anti-British?

Hardly.