Someone might think that this song is too childish and naïve to be considered an antimilitarist song (and indeed it reminds of nursery songs such as the famous "Ten Little Niggers [or Indians]" made famous by novelist Agatha Christie).

However, since my childhood I always felt that the progressive "disappearing" of the ten soldiers was terribly dramatic, albeit accompanied by these childish and naïve rhymes. Even the mixed language in the refrain (which is a sort of hybrid, half way between Milanese and Italian) seems like a lively portrait of Italian soldiers in First World War: semi-illiterate peasants tired of marching to no-where and of seeing their fellow soldiers die.

Whatever you may think of it, it is from this very song that I learned to hate war (and, at the same time, I also learned to count in Milanese, which is a really useful skill to have. :-))

The spelling of Milanese (the... (Continues)