In 1892, Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem about the paradigmatic British soldier, Tommy Atkins, and his paradigmatic treatment at the hands of an indolent democratic society that takes him for granted – until he is needed. It read in part:
For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ ‘Chuck him out, the brute!’
But it’s ‘Saviour of ‘is country,’ when the guns begin to shoot.”