Category: Warre and Peace

Warring Savages of America, and Kings

It may peradventure be thought, there was never such a time, nor condition of warre as this; and I believe it was never generally so, over all the world: but there are many places, where they live so now.

For the savage people in many places of America, except the government of small Families, the concord whereof dependeth on naturall lust, have no government at all; and live at this day in that brutish manner, as I said before. Howsoever, it may be perceived what manner of life there would be, where there were no common Power to feare; by the manner of life, which men that have formerly lived under a peacefull government, use to degenerate into, in a civill Warre.

But though there had never been any time, wherein particular men were in a condition of warre one against another; yet in all times, Kings, and persons of Soveraigne authority, because of their Independency, are in continuall jealousies, and in the state and posture of Gladiators; having their weapons pointing, and their eyes fixed on one another; that is, their Forts, Garrisons, and Guns upon the Frontiers of their Kingdomes; and continuall Spyes upon their neighbours; which is a posture of War. But because they uphold thereby, the Industry of their Subjects; there does not follow from it, that misery, which accompanies the Liberty of particular men.

See also

Books

And Criffel sink in Solway

The end of the War, eighty years ago, and I look at how peace has changed us as a nation. Peace is a state earnestly to be desired, but is not the natural state of mankind, leastwise our vigorous nation, when we were a vigorous nation. We have for many centuries faced threats with a solid wall of force. Could we now though?

When Burns wrote a song for the Dumfries Volunteers in 1795, he was in no doubt: every man would stand and defend Britain. The French Revolutionary War was bursting with flame, soon to become the Napoleonic Wars that would last until another twenty winters had passed. In the face of the threat of invasion, volunteer units formed themselves, and Burns was instrumental in raising a unit in his home town.

Does haughty Gaul invasion threat ?
Then let the louns beware Sir;
There’s Wooden Walls upon our seas,
And Volunteers on shore, Sir:
The Nith shall run to Corsincon,
And Criffel sink in Solway,
Ere we permit a Foreign Foe
On British ground to rally !
We’ll ne’er permit a Foreign Foe
On British ground to rally !

The Volunteers on shore were fit, armed and ready – in Dumfries and across the land.  Burns realised the local and the national. (The Nith runs from Corsencon Hill, and Criffel stands solidly looming over the Solway Firth, as the local men would have known; reliable, eternal truths.) The national defence was unquestioned, against a foe who might have seemed distant to Dumfries, but a danger to one and to all.

Be Britain still to Britain true,
Amang oursels united;
For never but by British hands
Maun British wrangs be righted!

Can we be as sure of ourselves today?  Do we even have a single nation “amang oursels united”? The Army’s Scottish regiments were amalgamated because they were unable to recruit, and all across the land a similar tale is told. An Army consisting only of Geordies, Ulstermen and Gurkhas might be formidable in ferocity, but it is no sure defence alone.

Patriotism is derided in high circles by sluggards and cowards, for little reason than asserting an imagined, false intellectual superiority. They have an impact, creating shame in those who should be solid. The attachment to the nation cannot be relied upon when there is no nation, by any understood definition, left. There are solid men left, but if a foreign foe were to tread the shore, are they, we, enough? Would there be more bayonets to our backs, from our own, than facing us?

(Of those who are solid, many alas are too solid physically – watching YouTube videos on the audacious exploits of the Second World War from the sofa, without the muscle to them that made their forefathers the unbreakable wall they were. It is curable, but needs work and commitment.

O how unfit! )

The world is not peaceful, and the implication of facing it with a dead national spirit is a horror to think of.

See also

 

Books

We shall see the sky sparkling with diamonds

Eighty years since Victory in Europe, and the world has changed so utterly we cannot imagine the joy of the day.

The War was beyond description. For those at home, six years of fear, despair, destruction, hope, hope dashed, then regained, and suddenly a new, unfamiliar world blinking into the light from all that had overwhelmed every moment.  For those on land and sea and air fighting, and endless train of scenes no man should see interspersed with comradeship, boredom, comedy, pain, suppressed fear, endurance beyond endurability, death, hopelessness without sight of an end. We as a nation fought a relentless, suborned people engaged in the most monstrous ideology we had ever seen (and lived to know it was defeated by allying with another; when Orwell wrote the word “doublethink” in 1948 we had all lived with it). Whatever we read of the War, those of us born later, that cannot but touch the surface of the horror that the nation defeated.

And then it was won. Good had triumphed over evil in the West (and in the East, evil triumphed over evil).

Rejoice they did, and we can still rejoice in knowing that, for all the trouble and wars since, nothing like that has befallen our nation since. I want to rejoice. Except that it is hard to do so when I see the two great Russian-speaking nations tearing each other apart in fratricidal war, watching cities fall and burn as once ours did. We celebrate peace just as two of the world’s largest nations, India and Pakistan, one artificially divided nation, are on the brink of war. There is no limit to the follies of mankind, or its evil. We learnt that as the ashes of Europe cooled eighty years ago, and saw all that the Hitler cult had done.

Eighty years ago they dreamed of peace before they dared to hope to see its dawn.  Like Sonya assuring her Uncle Vanya; “We shall rest! We shall hear the angels, we shall see the sky sparkling with diamonds, we shall see how all the evil of the earth, all our sufferings shall drown in mercy, which will fill the whole world, and our life shall become quiet, gentle, sweet, like caress.”

And then it was done. There was nothing to be done but unrestrained rejoicing, and so they should have. The peace is a challenge, but a greater, joyful blessing than we in the peaceful West can ever understand it, as we see a jewelled sky and life is quiet and  gentle like a sweet caress.

See also

Books

The institution of a Commonwealth

The finall Cause, End, or Designe of men, (who naturally love Liberty, and Dominion over others,) in the introduction of that restraint upon themselves, (in which wee see them live in Common-wealths,) is the foresight of their own preservation, and of a more contented life thereby; that is to say, of getting themselves out from that miserable condition of Warre, which is necessarily consequent (as hath been shewn) to the naturall Passions of men, when there is no visible Power to keep them in awe, and tye them by feare of punishment to the performance of their Covenants, and observation of these Lawes of Nature set down in the fourteenth and fifteenth Chapters.

The only way to erect such a Common Power, as may be able to defend them from the invasion of Forraigners, and the injuries of one another, and thereby to secure them in such sort, as that by their owne industrie, and by the fruites of the Earth, they may nourish themselves and live contentedly; is, to conferre all their power and strength upon one Man, or upon one Assembly of men, that may reduce all their Wills, by plurality of voices, unto one Will: which is as much as to say, to appoint one man, or Assembly of men, to beare their Person; and every one to owne, and acknowledge himselfe to be Author of whatsoever he that so beareth their Person, shall Act, or cause to be Acted, in those things which concerne the Common Peace and Safetie; and therein to submit their Wills, every one to his Will, and their Judgements, to his Judgment.

This is more than Consent, or Concord; it is a reall Unitie of them all, in one and the same Person, made by Covenant of every man with every man, in such manner, as if every man should say to every man, “I Authorise and give up my Right of Governing my selfe, to this Man, or to this Assembly of men, on this condition, that thou give up thy Right to him, and Authorise all his Actions in like manner.”

This done, the Multitude so united in one Person, is called a COMMON-WEALTH, in latine CIVITAS.

A Christmas to all, and beyond us

A happy, Hobbesian Christmas once more. May peace at home teach all the joy of peace all the year, in family and community.

I once wrote of a Hobbesian Christmas, writing in a dark time of war on several continents. It was with hope that by this time, by the end of 2024, guns would have ceased in the Ukraine, Syria, Yemen and the Holy Land and all the  places where families do not gather in joy and peace but huddle in fear and dread. It has not come to be, and since that time indeed more irruptions of raw, bestial humanity have burst upon homes that long for peace.

Peace is no naïve desire but an obligation upon Christians. It is the aim of all society amongst mankind. It was preached by the Prophets of Israel and again in the Gospel. Hobbes observed:

Luke 2:14.:In the Nativity of Christ, the voice of them that praised God saying, Glory be to God on high, and in earth Peace, good will towards men. And Isaiah 53:5. The Gospell is called the chastisement of our Peace. Isaiah 59:8. Righteousnesse is called the way of Peace. The way of Peace they know not, and there is no judgement in their goings.

Micah 5:4,5. speaking of the Messias, he saith thus, He shall stand and feed in the strength of the Lord, in the Majesty of the name of the Lord his God, and they shall abide, for now shall he be great unto the end of the earth; And this man shall be your Peace, Prov. 3:1,2. My sonne forget not my law, but let thine heart keep my Commandements, for length of dayes, and long life, and Peace, shall they adde to thee.

It is not so long since that these islands were rolled in a most bloody civil war. It was in that context, with its lessons immediately before his eyes, that Thomas Hobbes wrote Leviathan.

The ‘Warre of all against all’ is close beneath the surface, bubbling not from the Earth but from man. As peace is an obligation so must be the maintenance of social bonds, and ultimately of the Common-wealth; nation and state. We take these things for granted and so can gather in joy around a silly tree and a vast roast fowl, and that is as it should be in a society which maintains its peace and relative prosperity. Outside the blessed bounds of our isles though, where Christ is not preached, or preached poorly, where men feel free to disregard the bonds, the peace and prosperity vanish.

The world and mankind are as Hobbes taught. Relearning those lessons must be one step to achieving peace where there is now fear.

At Christ-tide then, do think of them, and pray for them, and recognise what allows us to enjoy what we have, which is both by our own efforts. and the unearned blessings of God.

See also

Books