This brilliant silence of winter is most touching, might I not say musical?
How different it is from that of a starry night in June,
which in mute eloquence proclaims repose!
In this is power, an appeal to thought,
strangely mingled with one to active energy.
Henry James Slack (1818-1896), 'The Ministry of the Beautiful'
This year a hundred years ago the Great War (World War I) raged over Europe. Its brutality and horrors were on a scale never seen before. Men got a daily ration of rum to be able to cope and still many couldn't. Many were left shell shocked and traumatised, only to be branded as cowards and deserters.
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge
till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
and towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
but limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;
drunk with fatigue, deaf even to the hoots
of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! - An ecstasy of fumbling,
fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
but someone still was yelling out and stumbling
and flound'ring like a man in fire or lime...
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
as under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
he plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
behind the wagon that we flung him in,
and watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
his hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
if you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
obscene as cancer, bitter as cud
of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, -
my friend, you would not tell with such high zest
to children ardent for some desperate glory,
the old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
pro patria mori.
Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)
PS Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori means it is sweet and honourable to die for one's country.
Finally, in November 1918 a truce was reached and the war ended. The subsequent reparations demanded from Germany lay the foundations for another war only 20 years later. And many more wars have been fought since, each with its own brutalities, horrors and its own stimulants, as if the Great War never happened, as if no lesson was ever learnt.
Every war that rages on earth in 2018 insults the memory of our fallen soldiers. It is about time we start to learn the lessons that their sacrifices taught.
Then, in November 2018, on Remembrance Day, when we remember the end of the Great War 100 years ago, we can remember those lessons and truly start to honour those who sacrificed their lives for us.
The treetop beds that chimpanzees make each evening have far fewer bacteria, parasites and faecal particles than human beds a study by North Carolina State University found.
