When people such as Prince Harry say they want us to face up to the past, do they really mean it? It’s a demanding task, needing patience, humility, and effort. Some people spend their whole lives on it. It means understanding people from very different cultures with very different values. It means acquiring some feeling for the hard physical conditions they had to face, their insecurity, their limited resources, the always slow and often imperfect spread of information, and the frequent illnesses and pains they took for granted.