Category: Warre and Peace

Peace to be pursued

Durham’s magnificent cathedral this past week has hosted an art installation dedicated to peace:  thousands of white, paper doves hang from the ceiling in a cloud. No more is explained but ‘Peace’.

I am not sure how to take art installations. Was it to be admired, explored at leisure? Was it for a set period or did one leave just as one feels?  Would the lighting or the mood music change as in a set performance? It did not, but then neither does the theme.

Rebellious reason argues against a demand for unspecified peace without practicality:  to uphold peace without question, the Ukrainian state would have allowed the tanks of neighbouring Muscovy to roll unresisted across the wheat fields, and if the peace movement of the 1930s had prevailed, then the whole world including all that we have known and cared for would have sunk into the abyss of a new Dark Age, as Churchill knew.

However it is a deeper theme.  Peace as a concept is not a single goal to be reached. It would be unreasoned folly to think it so.

But those qualities of man-kind, that concern their living together in Peace, and Unity. To which end we are to consider, that the Felicity of this life, consisteth not in the repose of a mind satisfied. For there is no such Finis Ultimus, (utmost ayme,) nor Summum Bonum, (greatest good,) as is spoken of in the Books of the old Morall Philosophers. Nor can a man any more live, whose Desires are at an end, than he, whose Senses and Imaginations are at a stand. Felicity is a continuall progresse of the desire, from one object to another; the attaining of the former, being still but the way to the later. The cause whereof is, That the object of mans desire, is not to enjoy once onely, and for one instant of time; but to assure for ever, the way of his future desire.

The concept of peace  between nations is a silly, limited idea of peace, just meaning an absence of war, which is a hard thing to achieve:

the nature of War, consisteth not in actuall fighting; but in the known disposition thereto, during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary. All other time is PEACE.

There is then no peace but only tension of balanced powers or yielding goodwill with the mailed fist reserved in case goodwill becomes unilateral. The idea of anarchist pacifism is as must a contradiction as a vegetarian pork pie: removing the force of the sovereign just invites gangs to impose themselves in its place – ask a Somali or a Syrian.

Peace is nevertheless a Christian goal, and so the doves of Durham are right.  The vision we have is that give to Micah: “But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid”.

The removal of force does not allow a man to sit beneath his fig tree unafraid, for in the natural state, as we know:

In such condition, there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving, and removing such things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.

Therefore to seek peace, we must do it with strength to defend the peace of each man, woman and child, with the goal that each should indeed sit in the shad of the vine and the fig tree: Micah was not envisaging an anarchy, but that “the Lord shall reign over them in Mount Zion:”.

‘Blessed are the peacemakers’. ‘The LORD lift up his countenance on you, and give you peace’: the Biblical blessing of peace is all through the Bible. There should be no question that Christians should seek peace. It is not a passive thing:  what does the Lord promise? – ‘And I will give peace in the land, and you shall lie down, and none shall make you afraid: and I will rid evil beasts out of the land, neither shall the sword go through your land.’; that is not sitting back but active peacemaking.

Indeed, activity appears to be the opposite of personal peace, namely a rest from labour, but the reality is that toil is necessary to achieve that end.  The vine needs dressing, and as to the fig tree, the vine-dresser shall dig about it, and dung it to make it bear fruit, that the farmer may eat.  The rest from labour comes through work, and innovating to make that work efficient, as a process that allows us to find peace of heart.

The peace is the ability to sit in the shade of the vine without fear, but if we stay there too long, the restless mind becomes bored, so we are up again – the theme for Micah is not slumber, it seems, but having no fear of violence from enemies, and that takes a robust, ruled society – as long as the ruler does not become violent himself.

To see Biblical peace as a cessation of war and no more is to miss the idea entirely.  If those thousands of doves were saying ‘Lay down all weapons ‘ then they would be against peace, as it opens the gate to evil-doers (who will not permit any to sit beneath their own vine). However that is not an argument against the pursuit of peace.

The church should loudly proclaim the need to promote peace, and so the installation in Durham is a worthy expression of true Christian values.

Even so, we must not forget that ‘there is no such Finis Ultimus… Felicity is a continuall progresse of the desire, from one object to another’.

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Make war fun

His last words were ‘Damn thing went off’.  The rifle volunteers were not boy-scouts for grown men but a serious military force, and having a grand time of it. We need them again.

Largely forgotten by popular culture, the volunteer movement was a major social movement of the nineteenth century. Technically they are still with us in the Army Reserve, but you would hardly know. It us nothing like the Good Old Days:  in Queen Victoria’s time, a quarter of a million men from all walks of life all across the realm would finish work of an evening, get into uniform and go off to the drill hall with their pals. It was more sociable than the pub, and sober and with guns. In the summer, trainloads of volunteers would head off for a camp and exercises – the factory toiler now arrayed as an officer, and labourers, clerks, farmhands and civil servants becoming soldiers to a man.

It was a self-grown military movement: men gathered in their workplaces and their villages, forming  their own military units unasked, with the excuse of an Act of Parliament unrepealed from Napoleon’s time – and when Boney’s nephew was crowned in 1852, it took on an urgency.  Men in their thousands bought guns or whatever weapons they could get, elected officers and presented themselves in ready-made units to their Lord-Lieutenant.

Their task was simple:  defend these islands against invaders. On the coasts and the hills stood a series of forts and artillery positions built by the Regulars – for invasion was a genuine concern with Europe restless, and the volunteers would be ready to fight, if the invasion had ever come.

The movement produced some cavalry units, artillery and others, but for the most part there were rifle companies.  At first they had to supply their own uniforms and weapons. The best-armed were a company formed by workers at the Royal Ordnance Factory in Enfield, who could borrow from work. Eventually the government provided weapons but long seemed embarrassed about the whole thing, as it had not been their idea.  In those early days, the rifle volunteers were a movement of the middle-class:  no-one is fiercer than a shopkeeper defending his stock and bookdebts. Later, when some pay was provided, factory labourers joined. In uniform though, all class is gone, and in the volunteers a machinist could be an officer and a bank manager a private.

It was a social event, to be in the volunteers, or the men would not have kept signing up and staying on, sometimes into their eighties. I had at least one ancestor who was a volunteer, and was tickled by the informal chumminess of the cards he received calling him for the week’s drill.

The activities of the volunteers were well reported, celebrated in the press, and it was serious business. Occasionally accidents reminded them of the reality of what they were: the quote at the head of this piece was from an obituary in The Times, of a volunteer officer who died cleaning his pistol at a summer camp. Moors and heaths sprouted rifle ranges, even some pubs; drill halls sprung up in little towns; manoeuvres were held on the downs and moorlands; there were massed reviews in Hyde Park.  Yet all this seems to have faded from the collective memory.

(This site has railed against the desk-bound clerks of the Ministry of Defence coming to outnumber the soldiers who are meant to be their purpose – there was a time though when they could be both:  the Civil Service Rifles were a formidable unit. Perhaps no one should be employed in that department without knowing how to use a rifle and bayonet and to sleep under canvass in the winter.)

The volunteers were raised strictly for home service, but such a powerful force would inevitably be seen as having a wider role:  several units volunteered en masse for Imperial Service against the Boers, and in the Great War, volunteers went to the trenches. Kitchener took a lesson from them, recruiting ‘pals’ units for the regular army, to keep the social bonds (until the reality of mass-slaughter meant splitting them up, as otherwise a town might be deprived of all its young men at a stroke).

The end of the Great War ended the volunteers as such. They were transformed instead into the Territorial Army. After the Russian Revolution, it was felt best to keep men from forming their own armed bands.

The Territorials continue  – now as the Army Reserve, and they are fine soldiers.

The fun has gone out of it though. Once it was accepted that a keen man could call around his friends in factory or office to form a rifle company – it is the spirit we need again. Joining a fighting unit must be better than any cringe-inducing ‘bonding weekend’ – camaraderie is important in a workplace, but it could channeled be to a greater, shaded purpose, for the nation.

The world has grown darker – it is too horrid to think of war spreading as far as our islands, but watch what has happened to the Ukraine and we know that the destruction of war is  reality, not history.  If we need to know where we will find the men who will stand as a wall against the invader – look around. War preparation is the most serious business of the nation, but Britons find our strength amongst ourselves and our social bonds within the compass of the seas: we owe our allegiance to the King directly and not at the direction of bureaucracy, and we fight relentlessly when warfare is part of our social  bond – so let us make it fun again.

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A safe, Hobbesian Christmas to all readers

The works of Thomas Hobbes have no examination of Christmas celebrations, but plenty of the world and the heart of man.

Inside there are celebrations of the season, Christian or secular. Outside our windows in the meantime the world turns and shows itself ever more Hobbesian in its workings. War of all against all seems distant from the cosy heath and the paper snowmen, but not from the burning house, and the frozen bodies elsewhere.

We taught ourselves to put faith in systems and words on paper, but paper is soon trampled underfoot. Paper did not prevent the war still grinding through the Ukrainian winter, nor across yet another year in Syria, nor the Yemen, nor Burma, nor in the Holy Land itself. Sermons may preach about folly, but it is a fond hope that brutal war is caused by folly, as if learning could stop it, when we have seen endless times that is not true. Germany in the early twentieth century was one of the most well educated of societies, but it began the most devastating wars and indescribable acts. It is not folly, but mankind in pursuit of motives long ago described, tipped into it by instability and the chance of a win.

The charm of choral anthems, and the silly carols spread about in their own ways the theme Christianity brought to the season, of Peace on Earth and Goodwill to All Men. That seems distant in much of the world, but that love for peace and harmony is the only hope a bloody world has to break the chains of animal motives, and allow growth and prosperity and an end to suffering.

For ‘Hobbesian’ is used by detractors to describe the brutal world, but it is in reality an analysis of what makes the world what it is, not how we would want it to be. That analysis is needed now as much as ever to break the fancies of those who still hope in bullet-proof paper, and find a real way of peace.

A blessed and holy Christmas then to all readers, and may our prayers be for our ideas of the season to spread beyond our cosy homes.

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Stars that shall be bright when we are dust

They shall not grow old as we who are left grow old. We have said that every Remembrance Sunday, and it chills at each reading. It must be every year, because as the echo of the Great War recedes into the past, as even the understanding of the Second War fades, a nation needs to be reminded, generation by generation.

It is not so far from them as the carefree youngster of our day might think. The dry pages of a history book conceal the truth that it is the story of youth: young men and boys like themselves, with the same hopes and dreams and silly humour, were cast into the adventure. They acquitted themselves gloriously; both those who emerged and those left on the field. Those who fell shall not grow old; but that phrase is from a longer poem, not all mournful but also praising the fallen for their dauntless spirit, which is to praise the spirit of young men:

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted;
They fell with their faces to the foe.

Today the world is unquiet.  Britain and Western Europe have, thanks be to God, rested in peace for nearly eighty years, though the edge of the continent has latterly been convulsed by that ancient curse. It is hard to imagine what the war was, or why. We have even had comedies set in the trenches. Actually though, in the shell-holes and trenches  there was still comedy, because it keeps a man sane. If you ever hear the songs the German soldiers sang, grim dirges they are looking forward to death, and compare them to Tipperary and others our boys sang in the midst of the destruction, that might give a clue to how a British sense of humour must have helped  us win through. These were young men just like those of our own day, and those of our own day need to be reminded.  Whatever wars we weep with when we wander to our quiet homes, if those who want to march at their anguish, they are nothing compared to the twentieth century.

Except, that a mother weeps as much or her son if he is one, or one of two million.

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.

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The case for declaring war

No, not the current one: that is not our war; but in general an honest declaration solves all sorts of problems and ambiguities.

I cannot think of any occasion since VE Day that the United Kingdom, or the United States come to that, has issued a declaration of war. If this were an indication that peace has reigned, that would be a fine thing, but it has not, and British forces have been engaged in many wars, not just against insurgencies but against states – against China (in Korea), Egypt, Indonesia, Argentina, Iraq twice over, Serbia, Syria and more I am sure, without a single admission that this was war indeed in spite of its being obvious.

This is not peace but mendacity, and it leaves uncertainty about the consequences.

We have forgotten why the Crown declares war (and how to: in August 1914 it was said that the Foreign Office were in a panic because they had not issued a formal declaration of war for so long they had forgotten how). Two points:

  • A declaration of war is not an act of aggression but a recognition of an existing reality;
  • It is a declaration to one own nation more than to the enemy.

When a state of war exists, British subjects are on notice that they may not trade with the enemy; citizens of the enemy state are subject to legal disabilities and their property is frozen; having business with the enemy is a form of treachery, perhaps even treason. How would one know when these apply without an actual statement from the government that a state of war exists?

On the other side of the coin where there is no state of war, Britons are free to do business as we please, and defy all the tutting disapproval of politicians as we do so. There must be a sharp distinction.

It is not obvious when there is a war, when all trafficking with the other side must stop. As Hobbes observes:

For WARRE, consisteth not in Battell onely, or the act of fighting; but in a tract of time, wherein the Will to contend by Battell is sufficiently known: and therefore the notion of Time, is to be considered in the nature of Warre; as it is in the nature of Weather. For as the nature of Foule weather, lyeth not in a showre or two of rain; but in an inclination thereto of many dayes together: So the nature of War, consisteth not in actuall fighting; but in the known disposition thereto, during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary. All other time is PEACE.

In the old days there was no need for parchments and seals and florid language: a Royal Navy frigate would haul over to Normandy and seize a couple of French fishing boats, and that was a declaration that a state of war existed.

Even a paper war is war if unambiguous.  If we read the account by Hobbes of how the Civil War began, it was when “the Will to contend by Battell is sufficiently known“:

After the sending of these propositions to the King, and his Majesty’s refusal to grant them, they began, on both sides, to prepare for war. The King raised a guard for his person in Yorkshire, and the Parliament, thereupon having voted that the King intended to make war upon his Parliament, gave order for the mustering and exercising the people in arms, and published propositions to invite and encourage them to bring in either ready money or plate, or to promise under their hands to furnish and maintain certain numbers of horse, horsemen, and arms, for the defence of the King and Parliament, (meaning by King, as they had formerly declared, not his person, but his laws); promising to repay their money with interest of 8l. in the 100l. and the value of their plate with twelve-pence the ounce for the fashion. On the other side, the King came to Nottingham, and there did set up his standard royal, and sent out commissions of array to call those to him, which by the ancient laws of England were bound to serve him in the wars. Upon this occasion there passed divers declarations between the King and Parliament concerning the legality of this array, which are too long to tell you at this time.

In the meantime the Parliament raised an army, and made the Earl of Essex general thereof; by which act they declared what they meant formerly, when they petitioned the King for a guard to be commanded by the said Earl of Essex. And now the King sends out his proclamations, forbidding obedience to the orders of the Parliament concerning the militia; and the Parliament send out orders against the execution of the commissions of array. Hitherto, though it were a war before, yet there was no blood shed; they shot at one another nothing but paper.

It soon became more than paper, and what a bloody war it was to torture the guts of the realm. The reality was shown before the first musket ball flew.

If all wars could cease by the stroke of a pen, let that pen be brought forth at once. A generation which has only seen peace at home may not know how there are no words to describe the horror of it but those cowering under the rubble of Kiev, weeping for their sons and husbands or living in uncertain terror from moment to moment may show you. If the obsolescence of formal Declarations meant this could not happen then would be well rid of those poisonous documents. However perhaps doing away with them has made it worse: if no government could begin its war without taking the awesome step of an open, formal declaration, they would not set to war as lightsomely as has been done over these last eighty decades, and there would be far fewer widows in dark rooms cursing to the end of their days. War is no light step, and pretending you have not taken it just because you did not signed a formal document, is dishonesty.

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