I must admit that in many respects, I find the former Labour cabinet minister, Roy Hattersley, to be a bit of a buffoon in his clinging to socialist dogmas of a planned, highly taxed economy. But he can write: and this essay on the funeral of Harry Patch, who had been the last surviving British soldier of the First World War, is first class.
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Fine words about the passing of a very old soldierAugust 7th, 2009 |
 18 comments to Fine words about the passing of a very old soldier |
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My wife attended the funeral.
Very very moving, was her verdict.
“War isn’t worth one life” – Harry Patch
Sounds Like a barking moonbat to me
Well, to be fair, that particular war probably wasn’t.
If ever there was an utterly lunatic war, it was WW1.
The point about Harry Patch is reall right now a media-directed one. But we shall get over it for that…
Just now, he represents the passing away of the last known living witness this side of the Channel, of a terrible (but also probably strategically unavoidable) war, which distorted mortally the whole of the world’s history for the next hundred years, and the effects of which are still felt today. This is not even to take into account the uncrossable oceans of blood and unscaleable mountains of sorrow whch ensued directly or indirectly therefrom.
The (what I would try to call) the “memesphere” (I don’t know, do you?) is trying to effect some sort of closure on this sad box. It has fastened on HP, partly because he is the last and partly because a couple of other poor old chaps have also just passed on, and it seems the right time to have a good old press-barney. Also the 95th anniversary of the start of his war came just a little time ago.
In the end you can’t just pretend it was all a bad dream and nothing happened that affects us today. Different political epistemologies have to sit and consider whether one is more objectively right than others.
The Universe does encompass objective Good and objective Evil. Until Man came, the “vector-sum” of results was probably neutralin terms of creation and sustaining of ordered life and evolution: no “near-[insert planet name]” asteroid or supernova “knows”, knew or will ever know what its arrival will destroy or create, somewhere else, millions or billions of years later.
Harry Patch and his chums knew nothing of this science and wonder and awesomeness. But they probably thought, despite Harry’s cynical words in later life – and who can blame him and not forgive him, poor old noble chap? – that they were Doing The Right Thing.
To understand what he did and then later thought, we ought I guess to view Harry Patch, and the millions like him, in the light and from the angle they thought they were coming from, when they went to war. [Corel paintshop progs and Photoshop now let us even do this for physical objects] :: we need to teach more archival and chronological history in today’s British schools, to let today’s children understand how real people thought then (in real towns which they today now still inhabit) not the current PC deconstructed “everyone was morally-equivalent but we were worse” Lytton-Strachey-Maynard-Keynes interpretation.
Perry:
Surely you are aware of the work of Fritz Fischer? He showed almost 50 years ago, through research in the Imperial German archives, that Germany had decided it needed to fight a European war to forestall Russia, and was determined to have one. World War One could not have been avoided.
Fischer also showed, to general dismay in Germany, that the war aims of Imperial Germany did not differ much from those of Nazi Germany, namely the destruction and economic enslavement of France and Russia, annexation of Belgium, Luxemburg and northern France in the west, Poland, the Ukraine and Baltic states in the east. If Britain had not fought, we would have faced a hostile Germany, in complete control of Europe, and building up a bigger navy than ours. We were going to fight them sooner or later, better to do it with France and Russia as our allies.
I’m sorry that poor old Harry Patch might have gone to his grave thinking the sacrifice of his mates was futile, it was anything but. What went wrong was the loss of the peace by political pygmies. which led to World War Two. That was the needless war, not, paradoxically, World War One.
Ah that Mr. Hattersley.
And what of double jeopardy, the right to trial by jury, the right to bear arms, the right of free association, the right to remain silent, the right of free speech and all the rest?
What of decade after decade of treachery for the sake of the EU and the UN?
What of the destruction of the House of Lords and every last vestige of its role as independent second chamber?
The fact is Hattersley and his gang have wrought more damage upon our constitution than Hitler, Kaiser Bill and Napoleon combined.
Perhaps Hattersley thinks that his courtier’s flattery will somehow deflect jugement from his very active role in the oppression of our people?
Well, the masses may be susceptible to the calculated eulogies of confidence tricksters and power-lusters but reality is not.
Though we live in days perilous to happiness and injurious to liberty I believe that freedom will one day return to our shores.
Then history will deliver the final judgment on Hattersley and all his crew, and that judgment will be harsh indeed.
John K, you might be aware that the stock line that WW1 was a totally pointless war is certainly not universally accepted. It is certainly true that Kaiser Wilhelm was an expansionist, etc.
John W at 5.06pm
Best comment of the week on any blog I visit.
Samizdatistas, make it a ‘quote of the day’?
It is remarkable how contemptuous the Germans have always been towards Manchestertum.
Has German classical liberalism ever extended much beyond Schiller and Goethe? Is Austrian economics merely a tool of greater efficiency only to be harnessed, ultimately, by the state?
I have another question for which I have a ready answer.
“How do you turn an ardent American pacifist into a ‘bloodthirsty warmonger?'”
Simple, invite them to the Headquarters of the German High Command:
“No, we shall tell you what it [German Militarism] is. Organization and obedience — nothing more, nothing less. It is that that makes Germany- great. And it is that that you must come to if you would be a great nation.”
I protested that I thought we [USA] are already a great nation.
“Ah Well, then,” they answered, “if you would continue great. Otherwise you will smash. Democracy, bah! license, lawlessness, disruption. Organize, obey, — or smash.”
And they believe it.
… It has been my peculiar privilege to talk through long evening hours with a few of these men [German intellectuals] at Headquarters. Not exactly the place, one would think, for meeting these men, but let us say this for them: some of them fight as well as talk. And they fight, not simply because they are forced to, but because, curiously enough, they believe much of their talk. This is one of the dangers from the Germans to
which the world is exposed: they really believe much of what they say…… it is a point of view that will never allow any land or people controlled by it to exist peacefully by the side of a people governed by our point of view. For their point of view does not permit of a live- and-let-live kind of carrying on. It is a point of view that justifies itself by a whole-hearted acceptance of the worst of Neo-Darwinism, the Allmacht of natural selection applied rigorously to human life and society and Kultur.
So we talked out the biological argument for war, and especially for this war. The captain-professor has a logically
constructed argument why, for the good of the world, there should be this war, and why, for the good of the world, the Germans should win it, win it completely and terribly. Perhaps I can state his argument clearly enough, so that others may see and accept his reasons, too. Unfortunately for the peace of our evenings, I was never convinced. That is, never convinced that for the good of the world the Germans should win this war, completely and terribly. I was convinced, however, that this war, once begun, must be fought to a finish of decision — a finish
that will determine whether or not Germany’s point of view is to rule the world.
And this conviction, thus gained, meant the conversion of a pacifist to an ardent supporter, not of War, but of this war; of fighting this war to a definitive end — that end to be Germany’s conversion to be a good Germany, or not much of any Germany at all.
My “Headquarters Nights” are the confessions of a converted Pacifist…
“Headquarters nights; a record of conversations and experiences at the headquarters of the German army in France and Belgium” Vernon Kellogg [1917].
John K, oh I agree it was not avoidable. When it comes to wars, it does not take two to tango, just one.
But I stand by my comment: it was a lunatic war that was in effect a Europe-wide suicide pact that ended Europe’s global cultural and economic pre-eminance and distorted western civilisation in more ways that I can mention. And what makes it lunatics? This outcome was predictable at the time by anyone not utterly boxed in by the nationalist meta-context.
WW1, not WW2, was *the* greatest European catastrophy since the Black Death and the first true expression of the magnitute of how horrendous the westphalian nation-state concept truly is as a vehicle of collective wickedness.
Regardless of the rights and wrongs of WWI, it did not have to be run in the demented way it was.
Nor is this “hidesight” – for example the contrast between the methods of General Plummer and General Haig (and his followers) on the Western Front, is striking.
As has been said (I forget by whom) “General Haig sometimes seemed to using 17th century pike block tactics”.
Most of what I would have said has already been said, esp. by Perry, and the other commenters who have discussed the massive stupidity and murderous nature of WW1.
One of the few political comments I can remember my Grandfather making was an expression of utter contempt for Pres Wilson, both for getting the US into the war, and then for his post-war naivete at Versailles.
WW2 was very much the final stage of WW1. The political settlement at the end of WW1 satisfied no one, and the issues between the various belligerents could only be finally decided on the battlefield.
If one looks over the globe from a WW1 perspective, it is quiclly apparent that many of the fault lines that formed as the various empires fell still exist as troublesome zones of continued conflict. The Mideast is the most obvious example, but there are others through Asia and Africa, as well as Europe itself, that continue to rumble.
There is some newsreel footage of the aristocracy of the world gathering for the funeral of Queen Victoria. Dozens of kings and princes, counts and dukes, maharajahs and sheiks, many of them related and intermarried, esp. in Europe.
Bejeweled and plumed, many in military dress so fanciful that the viewer can only smile at the image of these dandies riding into combat, it was the power of the world, which had reigned for centuries around the globe, gathered to mourn the passing of the last of the great empresses, and to size each other up.
Within a few decades, almost all would be swept away, an entire world culture gone, not with the wind, but buried in the rubble of suicidal wars and revolutions inspired by their own stupidity and blindness.
They were replaced by some of the most ferocious monsters ever to walk among us, each claiming that the light of science and the force of history justified their drive to power.
The divine right of kings was dead, replaced by the needs of the folk, and the proletariat, and the nation.
Now we observe the new rulers of the world, the tranzi class of pols and experts and academics, businessmen and managers of the stateless NGO’s, flying off to meetings and conferences, negotiating and mingling, deciding the course of the world’s peoples.
The jewels and plumage replaced by expensive suits, and all the latest gadgets of sophisticated power and influence.
And, just like the tottering princes of that old newsreel, they too will soon be swept away. The only question is—who will do the sweeping?
The people, for their own benefit, or another collection of vampires, whose hunger for the blood of their fellow citizens can never be satisfied?
Agreed:
Either do not come into the war – and thus save more than 100, 000 American lives. Or fight it to the finish – Germany was collapsing when the politicians ordered an end to the fighting in November 1918 (much to the frustration of General Pershing and the rest of the Allied commaders – who watched their men cheated of victory after all their sacrifices).
Leaving a united Germany surrounded mostly by little states was (as Supreme Commander Foch pointed out) not peace but “a 20 year truce” (he was out by one year).
Not breaking up Germany into an independent Bavaria, Hannover (and so on) made World War II almost certain. Even if it was decided that this could not be done – at the very least the allied armies had to march into Berlin (otherwise the Germans would never really believe they had been defeated).
Breaking Germany up might have also been dangerous but the march into Berlin would have spiked the guns of the likes of Hitler with the, “Never defeated on the battlefield, stabbed in the back” schtick.
I too used to think that the UK and the US should have remained neutral during WW1 and WW2 but I am now convinced that such splendid isolation(Link) would have been a catastrophe because then Germany would have been the first country to create nuclear weapons – and the first to use them.
The root of the problem lies in the fact that Germany should never have been created in the first place.
Heinrich Heine foresaw the looming devastation and he identified the origin(Link) – what followed was inevitable, not merely WW1 but eminent doctors of philosophy(Link) all too willing to do the bidding of the supreme legislator(Link), the welfare state, environmentalism and all the rest.
There is a very important lesson(Link) to be learned from German history but time is running out for all of us.
In the old days (before the Libertarian Alliance and myself became unfriends) I wrote a piece for them on Otto Von Bismark, arguing that he was a menace and was the first man to introduce (on a national scale) the various programs that grew into a Welfare State. And that his military/political success made his statism popular in other nations.
I have not changed my position – and therefore I agree with you John W.
The unification of Germany did a lot more harm than good – even at the time it meant higher taxes being enforced on Kingdoms like Hanover, but it was the long term consequences that were truly terrible,
However, I must confess to not being wildly in favour of Italian unification either – in that it meant higher taxes, conscription (in places like Sicily that had not had it) cultural persecution (not just in the South but even in the lands around Venice where the very language was attacked) and yet did NOT mean less corruption and so on.
I am told that such a position makes me an “ultra Tory” even in 19th century terms – but to me it is simply the position that I (as a libertarian) am driven to by looking at the historical facts.
I refuse to compare the old Kingdoms and Grand Dukedoms to some ideal “unified Italy” that existed only in the minds of certain people. I insist on comparing the old Kingdoms and Grand Dukedoms to the new Italy that was actually created.
If this makes me an “ultra Tory” so bit it.
Paul, your knowledge of history never ceases to amaze me. How do you know all this stuff?