Hope. And glory.

[fpb]

Today Britain celebrated (on an artificially chosen date) the sixtieth anniversary of the victory in World War Two. This is a subject that never ceases to hold interest for me, I think because there are so many powerful reflections on the centrality of morality in political life; it is almost more like an epic created by a master poet - a Mahabharata or Gerusalemme Liberata or Paradise Lost,with the difference that it all happened. Indeed, there is literature in it. Our perception of this Armageddon of the recent past has been shaped by the performances of three stupendous orators, Charles De Gaulle, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston S.Churchill; not every great struggle has been dressed in the memory with great masterpieces of the art of words, like hangings of cloth of gold. But it was the material itself, the life that men were called to lead and the deaths they were asked to die, that gave these speakers their material. When Churchill said that "the whole country was the lion, I only had the privilege to give the roar", he was not joking. The country was determined to fight no matter what; and, sixty years after, the sight of a literal forest of flags, thousands of banners, each for a unit mostly long since disbanded, gave the impression of the incredible effort that the British people made - not only at the front, but in the industries, in the fields, down the mines, on board ship, and across the world. The people, who in the thirties had been committed to appeasement and pro-Germanism to the point where neither Hitler nor Mussolini could ever bring themselves to believe they would resist, had finally resolved - almost too late - to do just that; and went into the war with the same English obstinacy, so infuriating to anyone who ever tries to talk sense to an Englishman, with which they had crazily insisted on twenty years of appeasement. After rejecting and reviling Churchill for twenty years, they now demanded him and would have no other leader, because they knew now that he had been telling the truth. And he led them by continuing to tell them the truth. It was because he told the bitter truth to his people, that he was trusted; and that his speeches, sixty years after, still have the power to bring tears of pride to your eyes.

Without wanting it, our loathsome enemies have given this ceremony a meaning and value that the organizers never imagined. Sixty years after, London is again in the front line. Murder and tyranny are on their hind legs again, clawing at the life of men, breathing fire. And once again the conduct of Londoners under fire becomes itself a symbol of everything that the right side stands for - of a nation of free men who will not let their conduct be dictated by terror and mass murder, who will maintain the sense and sanity of Western civilization in the face of mass murder meant to terrify and to break the will; a silent, obstinate, enduring nation, nearly impossible to convince by reason, but utterly impossible to change by force. Garret Fitzgerald, a former Irish Prime Minister, remembered that as a young man the fear went around the world that, with France fallen, Britain would accept a negotiated peace with Hitler. As he tells it, however, nobody in Ireland took that fear seriously. The Irish knew the English. They knew that once their minds were made up, nothing would ever remove the mailed glove from the enemy's throat, till England was either destroyed or victorious.

So it is today. "The people of England, that never have spoken yet", have a habit of speaking by deeds; and once again, their deeds embody and give meaning to the struggle of everything sane and noble and true in the West to survive cowardice, surrender and tyranny. Sixty years ago, they were the diamond tip of the slowly gathering alliance that eventually broke Germany and Japan; today, they are the image and the symbol of Western justice and defiance. And as this generation gathers perhaps for the last time to celebrate, honour and thank the courage of their grandfathers, it is as though a torch that lights the world had been passed on.

Comments

[patchworkmind.livejournal.com]

Without wanting it, our loathsome enemies have given this ceremony a meaning and value that the organizers never imagined. Sixty years after, London is again in the front line. Murder and tyranny are on their hind legs again, clawing at the life of men, breathing fire. And once again the conduct of Londoners under fire becomes itself a symbol of everything that the right side stands for - of a nation of free men who will not let their conduct be dictated by terror and mass murder, who will maintain the sense and sanity of Western civilization in the face of mass murder meant to terrify and to break the will; a silent, obstinate, enduring nation, nearly impossible to convince by reason, but utterly impossible to change by force. Garret Fitzgerald, a former Irish Prime Minister, remembered that as a young man the fear went around the world that, with France fallen, Britain would accept a negotiated peace with Hitler. As he tells it, however, nobody in Ireland took that fear seriously. The Irish knew the English. They knew that once their minds were made up, nothing would ever remove the mailed glove from the enemy's throat, till England was either destroyed or victorious.

Terribly well put.

I was going to write an entry on the occasion and its new relevance, but once again you have beaten me to the punch. I reckon it's what I get for being several hours behind. Oh well. You likely did a better job than I would have done. Bravo.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Actually, the Queen herself (who has been remarkably good these last few days, including a wholly unexpected speech in a hospital the day after the bombing) said it herself first, in an excellent speech to the veterans: "...it is no wonder that, in the present dark and dangerous days, the current generation turns to the example you have set..."