FROM THE EDITORS

Abstract

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