floggings will continue until morale improves (1988) firing (1977) no liberty (1966)

[Garson O'Toole]

Jonathan Lighter said
> Voltaire famously expressed a related sentiment in _Candide_: "Dans ce
> pays-ci il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral pour encourager les
> autres."
> "In this country [England], it's a good idea to execute an admiral from time
> to time - to encourage the others."
>
> Voltaire was referring to the execution in 1757 of Adm. John Byng, not for
> cowardice but  for failing to disobey [sic] an order during the Battle of
> Minorca. Though most of the nation sided with Byng, and even the House of
> Commons recommended clemency,  George II refused to commute the sentence.
>
> IIRC, Gen. Broulard (Adolphe Menjou) uses Voltaire's phrase "to encourage
> the others" in justifying the executions that are the climax
> of Kubrick's _Paths of Glory_ (1957).
>
> JL

Thanks for your insight. I think that Byng's story and Voltaire's
phrase did provide inspiration for some comments about flogging.

Citation: 1863 August, Critical Notices, United Service Magazine, No.
CCCCXVII, Hurst and Blackett.

Later in the day he had to fag for him at cricket or fives, or run
messages, and do his little marketings for sausages, rolls, muffins,
tarts, and fruits, with the risk, if caught out of bounds, of having a
flogging, to encourage the others, as a Frenchman said of the
execution of Admiral Byng.

http://books.google.com/books?id=ZAQdB5Z16qUC&q=flogging+encourage#v=snippet&q=flogging%20encourage&f=false


Citation: 1909 February, Public Ridicule, Locomotive Engineers
Journal, page 107, No.2, Vol. XLIII, Brotherhood of Locomotive
Engineers (U.S.).

In those good old days we flogged our sailormen "to encourage the
others," and there were many trussed at the triangles who would now be
simply admonished.

http://books.google.com/books?id=lCscAAAAIAAJ&q=flogged#v=snippet&q=flogged&f=false


Citation: 1965. The Railway Navvies: a history of the men who made the
railways by Terry Coleman, page 189, Hutchinson. (Caveat: snippet
view)

... and would just have liked to flog a few of them, to encourage the
others. But Sir Morton Peto had quite distinctly refused to allow his
men to be placed under martial law as some of the officers wanted, and
maintained that his was a civilian force under his own humane
discipline.

http://books.google.com/books?id=47WwAAAAIAAJ&q=%22flog+a+few%22#search_anchor

Garson

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