DESPITE their radical poverty and rejection of the world, the Cowley Fathers were by no means unpatriotic. Late at night on Coronation Day 1911, Fr George Congreve heard Fr Benson in his cell singing “God save the King”, and he was personally delighted when [his nephew] Walter was appointed CB in the Coronation Honours. Congreve was proud of the careers of his nephews, and especially that of Walter, chronicling his promotions in his correspondence.
In 1901, Congreve had sympathised with a sister-in-law that all three of her sons were now serving, two in South Africa and the third in India. Billy Congreve was commissioned into the Rifle Brigade in 1911, and his brother Geoffrey was a Cadet at the Royal Naval College, Osborne, in the same year. Walter was promoted to the rank of General in 1912.
Congreve’s personal links in the military, as well as his own direct experience in Cape Town during the Boer War, made him well aware of the reality behind military pomp and circumstance, and he had been touched in his life by the human cost of war.
He knew that soldiering “is not about living at home and showing off in uniform in fine weather”. As chaplain to the Cape Mounted Police, Congreve reported how his men had “come on a laager of 14 Boers: rushed them, killed one, taking the rest prisoners”, and he knew the rough violence and dehumanising tendency of war, describing in one letter the boasting of a militiaman who told him that he had killed a native in cold blood.
Congreve’s first-hand experience meant that in 1914, now back in Oxford, he was well placed to help his community — and a society at large whose experience was the Victorian pax Britannica — to understand and reflect on the outbreak of the Great War.
Billy and Pamela on their wedding day
As a respected teacher with military connections, his views were sought. Fr Benson was noted for his conviction that the end of the world was very near. For Benson, modern conflicts were the birth pangs of the new age. During a crisis with Russia in 1878, he wrote: “We learn of the drawing near to war. I hope it will call the English nation out of this miserable life of self-indulgence. We must pray God garners to give us some fresh recruits for our own military movements.”
Congreve was less apocalyptic in his approach, but he “felt” the War. It was said of him: “Father Congreve was in it utterly. He was on fire for justice, the justice menaced by the enemy. He had no tolerance for pacifism, which is, I suppose, not the temper that loves Peace, but the temper that prefers Peace to Duty.”
While he was not “blind to the evils war occasions or brings to light, or to the faults and sins of soldiers”, he was touched by stories of chivalry and care for friend and foe, through which he discerned the presence of Christ.
DESPITE this “feeling” for the War and the terrible casualties and upheavals it brought, Congreve placed it in a wider context, as a war like others rather than making the war itself the context for all else.
The scale of death is what marks out the Great War, and Congreve was alert both to the numbers and to the sting of personal bereavement.
Once again, the family were considerably committed. Within weeks of the outbreak, Congreve had “eight nephews in harness in this war and [I] am glad”. They included the two Generals, Walter Congreve and John Shea, a major, and more junior officers, all quickly engaged. Francis Congreve — now a captain in the Field Artillery — and John Shea were mentioned in dispatches by October 1914. A godson went to the trenches direct from school. They were united by letters and by prayer.
Death came close. Within a few days of Billy’s appointment as ADC to General Hubert Hamilton, the General was killed. Major Arthur King, married to one of Congreve’s nieces, was killed in action on 15 March 1915. Billy risked his life in a failed attempt to bring King’s body back. Unsurprisingly, Congreve had more sympathy for the leaders than historians have shown until recently, noting that, “it is very hard work for the generals. W gets about four hours sleep out of 48.”
Despite all this, Congreve set the World War in proportion. Notwithstanding the scale of suffering and death, he was able to approach it using frameworks and ideas that were familiar.
That war is an evil in itself was clear to Congreve, but he placed that evil in a wider context. War is “probably no worse than other evil processes of civilisation, corruption, oppression, mortality, godlessness, competition”.
In a series of letters which he and Fr Hodge wrote in 1916 to a pacifist correspondent, T. V. Morley, Congreve gave a classic exposition of Christian just-war theory, drawing on Augustine and Tertullian, whose views Morley had quoted in writing to Hodge (who seems to have asked Congreve for help in replying). While rejecting “‘jingo’ utterances of any bishop or priest”, Congreve was clear about the rightness of the causes for which his family and his nation fought, and that it is licit for a Christian to fight.
These were views he had long held in the face of past conflicts. In 1899, he had said that the struggle against the Boers was ultimately to the benefit of the African peoples, because British rule would not tolerate slavery and would impose justice, whereas the Dutch would impose the one and withdraw the other. In this he expressed views held by contemporary politicians.
He did not, however, always assume that “England” was the necessary champion of virtue. In 1895, he wrote sharply about gunboat diplomacy: “I suppose these horrible big guns and rams and torpedoes are to express roughly [i.e. forcibly] great principles. They send a few thousands of us into the air, into eternity — but a great principle has been maintained. Brute sin has to be awed by brute force. The only thing I can see would be if our captains on land and sea could come to recognise that Queen Victoria’s service means Christ’s service, and that the country they have to defend is our City Jerusalem.”
In a sermon on the “Peace of Jerusalem” in October 1914, Congreve developed the idea that a true patriotism leads to a love of God, who, in Jesus Christ, was himself a patriot for his own land. “Mary’s son took the natural virtue of the patriot, and rooted it in God. Our love of England is to be rooted in Christ’s love of His country, and . . . is to grow up to new heights, and unknown endeavours . . . capable of strange degrees of self-sacrifice.”
In the crisis of the nation, people whose faith has been lukewarm turn back to him and to love of the Heavenly Jerusalem, which is the homeland of all nations and peoples. Real patriotism thus implies love of neighbour.
ONCE again, the principle is that civilisation in all respects is enhanced by Christianity. This greater patriotism is served by the faithful warrior: “[A] man of battles and business should have gentle Christian thoughts in his mind all the time.”
Since war is an evil, properly to profess arms is to combat evil: “A good man does not become a soldier to create war but will seek to give war the best results possible and to conduct war as well as possible: chivalry, thoroughness, consideration, care for men.”
Congreve saw unselfishness in those who go to serve, which is the beginning of holiness, and the opening of the path to self-sacrifice. Duty thus becomes a path to holiness. Billy Congreve’s fiancée, Pamela Maude, thanked “Uncle George” for helping her to understand “the eternal security of duty known, and the love of God” as Billy went back to the Front in November 1915. Billy and Pamela married in April 1916.
Lambeth Palace Library“Uncle George”: Fr George Congreve SSJE
Billy, who became for Congreve what his father Walter had already been, an example of the Christian warrior who “suffers whatever there is to suffer in Christ’s service”, was killed by a sniper just seven weeks after his marriage. Congreve wrote therefore as one who knew the personal grief of war.
Nevertheless, if reward came for duty done, it would be a reward for something essentially unselfish, and so Congreve was able to feel pride in the promotions and awards conferred on his nephews, which included one of the first ever Military Crosses, awarded to Francis in January 1915.
Since, for the Christian, warrior or otherwise, death is not the end, death is not the worst thing that can happen. For Congreve, the fact of the resurrection removed from the World War, unique in the scale of the killing though it was, its particularity.
His message to those grieving the casualties of war was what he had taught the lepers on Robben Island. In the face of death, whatever the cause, the Holy Spirit is the Comforter, coming into the world of death to lift souls to God.
The key thing, therefore, is a personal relationship with God; and so Congreve taught that the soldier and the civilian have the same spiritual needs, since both are engaged in spiritual warfare which is more important than the battles of the world.
The Ven. Luke Miller is the Archdeacon of London. This is an edited extract from his book A Life-long Springtime: The life and teaching of Fr George Congreve, published by Sacristy Press at £24.99 (Church Times Bookshop £22.49); 978-1-78959-198-9 (Books, 11 March).