Here in Europe the last months have been full of heartbreak.
The 6th June remembered the slaughter in the west, taking thelives of enormous numbers of people from all over Europe, as states battled for supremacy and the right to direct human affairs over the coming decades
In my little village, the widow of a dear friend, now resting in the little cemetery at the bottom of the valley near my house, recalled the death of her father. He was a farmer, and the British soldiers were fighting to gain the high ground where she lived with her parents and thirteen siblings.
As the fighting got closer, and crossfire and shelling wreaked havoc in their little corner of greenery, they fled their house.
Her father (who, from the photograph looks a fine, jolly broadly mustacheoed Norman) worried about the horses, who were frightened by the flying metal and mayhem, said he would join the family at an aunt's house and returned to care for his animals. Past a little open barn - still there, I pass it often, he was hit by passing rifle and heavy machine-gun fire. His leg was blown off. His belly split open. He died near his horses. Some of the children saw his pitiful state. Our dear friend did not, mercifully, see it.
She says he was killed by German gunfire; in truth it could have been from either side, the fighting was so intense, and it moved back and forth through the fields. She wants to believe it was a German who did it. Understandable, but this is what myths are made from. She herself records that a pregnant family member was tended, in the heat of battle, by a German doctor, to help delay the onset of contractions, to give her the chance of escape.
He died.
She and the other little ones were brought up in a shattered Normandy, by a widdowed mother, with help an support from the country pople and relatives. But it was grindingly hard.
More recently, I have wept over the horror of the first war, not just because I am reminded daily of its dehumanised, state-inspired, civilisation-removing dreadfulness, but because the societies that have emerged simply perpetuate the lies and tribal absurdities hat guarantee eternal repetition of the killing.
I am told by 'respectable' journlists - now known as 'opinion formers' - that germany is britian's 'ancient and ancestral foe'.
Really?
I recall an eighteenth century and a nineteenth centurey when there was no such conflict - indded Blucher, in riding late in the day to the aid of Wellington, and falling on Ney's troops with vengeance for thee many depredations the Grande Armee had inflicted on the fracured states in German lands saved the day and ushered in the glory days of the (for me) dear and kind British Empire.
I recall the exquiaite civilisation of the german peoples; their wonderful music. As I write this I am listening to Brahms Ein Deutsches Requiem, and I benefit from the ideas of German philosophy, theology, science, and mathematics; of Literature, architecture, homeliness, corporate togethernmess and manifest seriouslness of purpose.
Yet I am told they were my ancient enemy.
I have heard nobody say that the wars that ruined Europe for evermore are the result of what we all have within us.
We join groups. We then identifiy those outside our group, and prefer the - often entirely imagined - attributes of our group over all others.
From this comes the waves of resentment, linguistic mis-understanding, gastronomic isolation (can I eat at the table of an orthodox Jew or an Moslem whilst taking to his wife and daughters?) self-justifying agression, effective transfer of wealth by conquest and murder, and the whole panoply of seperateness.
'My fellow Americans' and 'The best is yet to come' followed by ' if you are not with us then you are aginst us'
'I give the German people the opportunity to do what they most wish - to submit' ( Yes direct for Addy himself)
Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the Waves
'Allons enfants de la Patrie, Le jour de gloire est arivee'
The heartbreaking truth is that the cause and continuation of war, slaughter, the rape of whoe societies is the unchanging desire of (nearly) all people to group together.
I see our Princes talk of 'duty'
In the contxt of the group that perpetuates the horror.
Our dead become, in Britian, 'The Glorious Dead'
No, they are crushed, smashed bodies, that once held the mind that direct the hand to touch and caress the chld, the mother, the love of his life.
Please tell me where I should find hope.
I can see none
