FROM THE EDITORS

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.