November
11th, 2018 will mark the one hundredth anniversary of the ending of
the First World War, known as Armistice. On "the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month" the
hostilities that lasted by my count four years and 116 days and known at the
time as “The Great War” came to an end. Between
all the participating countries, there were some 37,508,686 causalities, of
which 8,538,315 were fatalities. Truly a
tragic event in the history of mankind. It
was a war that changed the nature of western civilization, especially
Europe. Between books and poetry, I have
posted often on the Great War. If you
want to scroll through those posts, you can find them here and here and here.
Today
there will be lots of memorials and commemorations to this anniversary. President Trump will attend an event in France, and England will recreate
the thousands of bells that rung on that day.
From the Guardian:
“Inside might be a small
selection of the Allies, some dark Italian officer with cameo face, a blonde
English staff officer, a land girl on the bonnet, all mixed up with accretions
of Australians wearing Union Jacks instead of their slouch hats, a gorgeous
Indian in a turban and perhaps a bright blue Frenchman.”
The same report recorded
ecstatic crowds converging on Downing Street where the prime minister, David
Lloyd George, appeared and announced: “I am glad to tell you that the war will
be over at 11 o’clock today.” He waved, then disappeared inside, but the crowds
bayed for more until he reappeared at the first-floor window of No 10, along
with Andrew Bonar Law, the chancellor, and Winston Churchill, the minister of
munitions. All this, the paper said, as “the housemaids of Downing Street waved
their dusters and feather mops overhead”.
This year, Armistice Day
will fall on a Sunday. Thousands of local events are being coordinated by the
Imperial War Museum. And again the ringing of bells will play a large part. A
careful balance will be struck between the solemn sound of remembrance and
peals of celebration.
Christopher O’Mahony,
president of the Central Council of Church Bell Ringers, says he and others across
the UK have been planning their contribution for years. “Wherever you have
grown up, bells are part of the soundscape of the nation, whether it is a sound
of joy as at a wedding or of sadness at a funeral,” he says.
In the early morning of
11 November more than 3,000 bell towers across England, Scotland, Wales and
Northern Ireland will ring out with the sound of “half-muffled” bells, like a
slow march, in solemn memory of those who lost their lives.
To
commemorate this anniversary I want to post this poem about the conclusion of the war, this
time not by a poet who served in the war but one who was at the home
front. Most probably know of Thomas Hardy as a great 19th century English novelist. He was the author of Tess of the
d'Urbervilles, Jude the Obscure,
and others. But at around the end of the
19th century, Hardy felt his career as a novelist had come to an end
and switched over to poetry. He lived
all the way to 1928, well into the century, and wrote abundantly. He is regarded as one of the first modernist
poets and today his reputation as a poet among critics is almost as well
regarded as his reputation as a novelist.
“And
There Was Great Calm” was obviously written addressing the Armistice.
And
There Was a Great Calm
By Thomas Hardy
(On the Signing of the Armistice, 11 Nov.
1918)
I
There had been years of
Passion—scorching, cold,
And much Despair, and
Anger heaving high,
Care whitely watching,
Sorrows manifold,
Among the young, among
the weak and old,
And the pensive Spirit of
Pity whispered, “Why?”
II
Men had not paused to
answer. Foes distraught
Pierced the thinned
peoples in a brute-like blindness,
Philosophies that sages
long had taught,
And Selflessness, were as
an unknown thought,
And “Hell!” and “Shell!”
were yapped at Lovingkindness.
III
The feeble folk at home
had grown full-used
To 'dug-outs', 'snipers',
'Huns', from the war-adept
In the mornings heard,
and at evetides perused;
To day-dreamt men in
millions, when they mused—
To nightmare-men in
millions when they slept.
IV
Waking to wish existence
timeless, null,
Sirius they watched above
where armies fell;
He seemed to check his
flapping when, in the lull
Of night a boom came
thencewise, like the dull
Plunge of a stone dropped
into some deep well.
V
So, when old hopes that
earth was bettering slowly
Were dead and damned,
there sounded 'War is done!'
One morrow. Said the
bereft, and meek, and lowly,
'Will men some day be
given to grace? yea, wholly,
And in good sooth, as our
dreams used to run?'
VI
Breathless they paused.
Out there men raised their glance
To where had stood those
poplars lank and lopped,
As they had raised it
through the four years’ dance
Of Death in the now
familiar flats of France;
And murmured, 'Strange,
this! How? All firing stopped?'
VII
Aye; all was hushed. The
about-to-fire fired not,
The aimed-at moved away
in trance-lipped song.
One checkless regiment
slung a clinching shot
And turned. The Spirit of
Irony smirked out, 'What?
Spoil peradventures woven
of Rage and Wrong?'
VIII
Thenceforth no flying
fires inflamed the gray,
No hurtlings shook the
dewdrop from the thorn,
No moan perplexed the
mute bird on the spray;
Worn horses mused: 'We
are not whipped to-day;'
No weft-winged engines
blurred the moon’s thin horn.
IX
Calm fell. From Heaven
distilled a clemency;
There was peace on earth,
and silence in the sky;
Some could, some could
not, shake off misery:
The Sinister Spirit
sneered: 'It had to be!'
And again the Spirit of
Pity whispered, 'Why?'
Hardy’s
central question, put in the mouth of the “Spirit of Pity” is “Why?” There really was no satisfactory answer. It should be noted that the title is taken
from the Gospel of Mark, when Jesus awakes with the boat tossed in the
storm: “And he arose, and rebuked the
wind, and said unto the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there
was a great calm” (Mk 4: 39). Let us be
thankful we did not live through that war.
And let us pray for all those fallen from the violence, for all who those
suffered from injury and personal loss, and those that remained to deal with the
problems from the turmoil.
