Right players' military rank is displayed when you access the list of players? After doing that you see their respective rank and their stripes, etc. are displayed. You can tell if the person is a rookie, corporal, sergeant, etc. But what does a white flag mean? The person "surrendered"? What does the white flag where the person's military rank is supposed to be denote? A defeated player?
Yep, a player protected from some menace or got attacked and capitulated to avoid getting farmed over and over again.
when you capitulate you loose 10% of military points, to capitulate you got to: throne hall> capitulate> then do what you want.
a classic view is much better than the normal one.