THE TENDENCY of festivals and liturgical seasons to creep forward in the calendar has been observed before. Christmas displays in October, Easter eggs in January — these are lamented routinely. One development of this sort is perhaps to be welcomed, however: what we might call the growth of Remembrance-tide. The restoration of interest in Armistice Day itself, as an alternative to Remembrance Sunday, means that, unless the date coincides, acts of remembrance take place on two days, and sometimes on the days in between. The season is further extended by British Legion poppies, formerly reserved for Remembrance Day, which are now worn from the day in late October when they go on sale. In this way, Remembrance and All Souls-tide blend into one season of reflection, as people recall the lives that have come naturally to an end and those that have been shortened by conflict.
This year, the season began even earlier, on 9 October, with the national service in St Paul’s Cathedral to mark the end of military conflict in Iraq. In the predictable row over Dr Williams’s support or otherwise for the Iraq war, his remarks on the complacency with which war is sometimes regarded were overlooked. Despite, or because of, the threat of nuclear war, the perils of conventional war were scarcely thought of by his generation, he said. “We had begun to forget the realities of cost. And when such conflict appeared on the horizon, there were those among both policy-makers and commentators who were able to talk about it without really measuring the price, the cost of justice.”
Perhaps, he said, we have learned something, “if only that there is a time to keep silence, a time to let go of the satisfyingly overblown language that is so tempting for human beings when war is in the air”. It is remarkable that the two minutes’ silence has been preserved, given the tendency of politicians to fill any empty space with slogans, and the fondness of church leaders for pious words. But the democracy of the silence, in which all are free to pursue their own thoughts, is rightly considered a precious thing.
So, too, is the solemnity of the Cenotaph service in Whitehall and equivalent services across the country, and in particular the pacing of the ceremonies to match the slowest, oldest participants. So, too, is the act of wreath-laying, a gesture that requires no words. All this contrasts dramatically with the desire in some other countries to gloss over the military losses of the past. There is in Britain still, of course, the odd military tattoo, but nothing remotely on the scale of the precision parades that are mounted regularly elsewhere, where a display of well-armed soldiery is calculated to impress and deter neighbours and citizens alike. It is fitting that we allow the dead to school the living on how warfare should be regarded.
|
back to Comment
previous story
|
next story 
back to top
