11 November: Boreham on Remembrance Day

Unforgettable People
Anna Buchan, the brilliant sister of the late Lord Tweedsmuir, and herself the writer of so many popular books, has entitled the volume in which she gives us the saga of her famous family: "Unforgettable: Unforgotten." No more felicitous phrase could be coined in which to pay tribute to those deathless spirits whose lofty devotion and gallant exploits we recall on Remembrance Day. The commemoration gathers to itself new significance and solemnity with every passing year. It touches life, even on its most prosaic levels, to finer issues. The glorious traditions associated with those whose names we honour today, remind us that such sacrifices invariably involve those on whose behalf, they are offered in an imperative and abiding obligation. The man for whose sake others have suffered can never be quite the same again.

On the last page of his "Tale of Two Cities," Charles Dickens has made this crystal clear. With penetrating insight he outlines the thoughts that surged through the mind of Sydney Carton as he mounted the guillotine. "I see," he said to himself, "I see the lives for which I lay down my life, peaceful, useful, prosperous, and happy. They shall not be more honoured or more sacred in each other's souls than I shall be in the souls of both. I shall hold a sanctuary in both their hearts, and in the hearts of their descendants generations hence." Dickens never came nearer to inspiration than when he turned that exquisite phrase: "I shall hold a sanctuary in both their hearts!" It was in that sublime confidence that those whose chivalry we today recall, laid down their lives on the battlefields and oceans of the worId.

Sacrifice That Excites A Regenerating Shudder
No man can suffer for another without producing in the inmost soul of that other a profound psychological effect. The best illustrations of this subtle process, partly intellectual and partly emotional, are to be found in the pages of fiction. More than any other class of literature, fiction concerns itself with the intricacies of human sentiment and with their reaction to all kinds of external phenomena. Among the experts in this realm, two stand out conspicuously—Shakespeare and George Eliot. George Eliot figures in our literature as the audacious pioneer of introspective romance. She lays the soul bare. She is instinctively an analyst, a scientist, a philosopher. She knew better than any other English writer how to dissect a character whilst seeeming only to tell a tale.

In "Middlemarch" she dissects the character of Fred Viney. In a gripping scene she depicts Fred and Mr. Farebrother, the young rector, facing each other by moonlight on the village green. Fred suddenly realises that to save him from vices to which he had recklessly abandoned himself, Mr. Farebrother has made the greatest sacrifice that any man can make: for Fred's sake, the good man has desolated his own heart, and surrendered all hope of earthly happiness. The vision of the rector's drawn and tortured face precipitates a crisis in the soul of Fred Viney. "For," George Eliot incisively observes, "the contemplation of a sacrificial act produces a sort of regenerating shudder, making one ready to begin a new life." In that pregnant sentence we recognise the vital principle that underlies our Festival of Remembrance—the subjective emotion aroused in the beholder by the objective vision of suffering incurred on his behalf.

Sacrifices of Yesterday The Hope Of Tomorrow
Side by side with this revealing illustration from our English prose we may lay a companion story from our classical poetry. The villain and the hero of Shakespeare's "As You Like It" are brothers. Oliver, the elder, hates Orlando, the younger, and, despite all his promises to his dying father, seeks to destroy the boy. In the forest, Orlando comes upon his sleeping brother menaced by a venomous snake and a hungry lioness. He drives away the serpent and struggles with the beast. Oliver, awakened by the uproar, looks with horror on the gaping wounds his brother has sustained; is overcome by shame and remorse; and passionately implores Orlando's forgiveness. From that moment Oliver is a changed man. To Rosamond and Celia, who are astounded by the transformation in him, he explains:

'Twas I but 'tis not I. I do not shame
To tell you what I was, since my conversion
So sweetly tastes, being the thing I am.

Here again we have the subjective effect of the objective vision of vicarious suffering. It is, as George Eliot and Shakespeare have set themselves to show, part of the mystical mechanism of our complex human composition. The matter has the widest and most practical implications. Prof. William James used to insist that no man should allow himself to receive a powerful emotional impression without at once giving that internal impression an external expression.

The contemplation of such a surrender as brave men and good women made on our behalf in the cruel years of war, must produce in all thoughtful citizens a deeply rooted psychological and intensely practical effect.[1] The life of the world can never, after such a baptism of sorrow and of suffering, be what it was. Every man who gives a moment's serious thought to the sacrifices involved in the two world wars, will, in the process, undergo a subtle experience of moral exaltation and will register a secret but solemn vow that the world shall be a better place as a result of the noble blood poured out like an oblation on the altar of justice and freedom. Just as the reverent contemplation of the most sublime sacrifice ever offered has led to the institution and the world-wide conquests of the Christian Church, so a grateful review of the moving sacrifices made by those who gave their lives in the tragic years of war should issue in the emergence of a loftier citizenship and a higher plane of national life.

[1] This editorial appears in the Hobart Mercury on November 8, 1947—shortly after World War II.

F W Boreham

Image: Images of remembrance.