We come here today to remember, and at the heart of our remembrance is the placing of a wreath on the grave of a soldier who died in a war none of us remember, in a war I think none of our parents would remember. Some of you will be wondering in what sense this is remembrance, and I think you make a very good point. Some of you will be wondering if what we’re doing is glorifying war, and I hope that by the time you leave the Abbey, it will be clear that we’re not. And some of you will be wondering if we’re engaging in an exercise of patriotism that slips into nationalism with the potential for xenophobia and would, no doubt, like to remind me that patriotism is not enough, we must have no hatred or bitterness for anyone and I would congratulate you on your familiarity with Edith Cavell.
We come here to remember not only the dead of war, but all those who have gone before us and prepared our paths: all those who have made sacrifices so that we might have opportunities; and not only to remember but to commit to making the most of those opportunities and to making a better, more peaceful world. We come here not only to remember the dead of war, but we do come here to remember them, and remembering war brings us into a contested space. There is the message I want to share with you today, but going before me and shouting over one quiet voice in Westminster Abbey are the sounds of jingoism, of embracing violence so long as the other, whoever is this year’s enemy, is defeated.
There’s a poem from 1914 that lives rent-free in my head. The first stanza goes like this:
With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.
It seems to me very 1914, full of pride, confident in the rightness of the cause – rather like the scene from Blackadder where Lord George describes leapfrogging his tiddlywinks chums as they headed down the high street to sign up. It’ll all be over by Christmas is a line I still use to talk about the Diplomacy games that start in September, but unlike them, the first world war started in July and it wasn’t over for four more Christmasses.
We’re not here to remember 23rd August 1914, the first British action at the Battle of Mons, the inspiration for that proud thanksgiving, but 11th November 1918 when the guns fell silent and in between the two is a war, the very definition of a contested space. I’ve used that phrase twice now, and I’ve done so because it’s how the Dean likes to describe the Abbey – you are in a contested space, a building that means different things to different people, a place whose purpose is to hold difference, disagreement – a place of peace where it’s right to think of war.
The reason that I think it’s right to think of war, to remember the unknown warrior deliberately and specifically as well as your parents, ancestors, friends, teachers and all the host of others who have smoothed your path, is not to glory in it, but to recognise it. We are not living through a world war now, but we do live in a world of war, a time of war, and there won’t be less of it because we close our ears to it – but we can hope that there will be less if we, those of us here and those that will listen to us, if we try to make it less.
I’ve been reading Akala’s book Natives this term and he says that if Remembrance was about more than patriotism, if it was about humanity and a desire for peace, then we’d remember not just the farm boys of Bedfordshire, the pals regiments of the northern mill towns, the tiddlywinkers of Cambridge, but also the soldiers from India, the Caribbean, Australia, Africa and Canada who served with them; and not just them, but the Belgians, French, Russians and Romanians who were Britain’s allies; and not just them but the Germans, Austrians and Ottomans who were enemies in that war, but were still young men, sent to fight, and kill, and die; and not just them but the civilians of every nation who were frightened and alone and were killed; and not just them, but the victims of every war the British Army has fought in since, every time that our politicians have decided, for right or for wrong, that the current differences cannot be solved peacefully, that there must be bombs and bullets, and death and wounding, and thousands of civilians displaced, cold and hungry, and soldiers who come home to their families changed by their experience or not at all.
We had two Bible readings just now, and if you’ll forgive a crude simplification the first one says do not fear and the second says love one another and I can’t imagine a less helpful set of instructions for a soldier going to war. Do not fear when there are bombs flying overhead, when machine gun fire strafes your path, when you have to run towards dangers that have killed your friends and comrades? Being unafraid in those circumstances feels like madness rather than courage to. And love one another? Love your enemy who is throwing grenades at you, trying to kill you? How would you do that, and if you could, what would love look like in that situation? No, I don’t think those readings are aimed at soldiers going to war – I think they’re for us as we try to hold the peace in this contested space. When we commit, later, to making a better future, we’re making a promise to do so without fear, or at least not to stop doing so just because we are afraid. I think we’re promising to enter contested spaces, to engage with those with whom we have differences and, this is the second reading, and to listen, to see things their way, to do all we can to find a resolution, to accept that we might not be right, or that being right can be less important than being kind; to accept that we might not win, that a peaceful draw is better than coming out of a war having won, if that means having killed slightly more of the other side than they killed of yours.
We’re remembering the past here today and committing to the future, but if remembrance is more than patriotism and if war is more than 1914-18, why do we centre things on that one, black marble grave at the far end of the Abbey, the one nobody ever walks over? Why is there that one grave anyway out of the millions who fell in those years?
It was the request that an army chaplain made of the Dean of Westminster who made the request of the King – that there should be a focus for the grief of those whose loved ones were missing, presumed dead, whose remains might lie in an unnamed grave but who were never identified. Four such bodies were taken from the great battlefields of the western front and one was chosen at random to be buried here with honour greater than that of kings – George II was the last British king to lead troops in battle: his grave is beneath the lady chapel east of here and thousands of tourists walk over his memorial every day, most without even noticing it. But nobody walks over the unknown warrior; the unknown warrior is special, and he’s special because he is unknown, because being unknown he stands for all the dead. We don’t know if he was from Bedford or Blackburn, from Barbados or Bengal; we don’t know if he was brave or frightened; if he was a peaceful man who hated the fighting or a violent one who revelled in it; we don’t know how old he was; we don’t know who he left back at home; we don’t know if he was kind or honest or clever – we only know that he was alive and died because of war.
And that, I think, is the key. If we were remembering a hero for his deeds then I don’t think we could avoid glorifying war, but we’re not – we’re remembering a man who was alive and now is dead because of the war – and so I think we’re remembering everyone who died in war, no matter where they came from, no matter what they fought for, no matter which war they fought in. Every death diminishes me, says the poet, the world is the less for every life that is no longer in it. And that brief allusion brings me back to my earlier poem, because I haven’t told you the whole truth. That first stanza is only part of the reason it haunts me because there’s also a fourth stanza, a few lines that you might know, that you have probably read this evening, that the Head of School will lead us in shortly. The poem is “For the Fallen” by Lawrence Binyon and the fourth stanza goes like this:
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them
To grow old, to be wearied by age is a blessing, a privilege that it is easy to forget – and therefore we remember. At the going down of the sun and every morning we remember that others who should have seen this day have not, will not; that we are simply lucky to be alive; and that however frightening it is to reach out to our enemies, to love in contested spaces, however much fear we feel when we think about what we have to do, we owe it to the dead to make the most of those opportunities they will never have.
The present is a scary place, and I’m aware that for some of us here, war is not far away and long ago, but something that threatens today those close to our hearts. The present is scary and the future unknown, but we are blessed because we have both. My hope for us, the Harris Westminster community, is that we will not be afraid – or at least not so much that we don’t do all we might; that we will spread love – especially when it’s difficult, when our spaces are contested; and that we would remember and remember and remember.
Footnotes:
1. This, like "Why This Soldier?" (which also explores Edith Cavell's story more thoroughly) is an address given as part of the Remembrance evening rather than an assembly (which explains the reference to Bible readings as well as the focus)
2. Lawrence Binyon's poem is predictably enough a feature of several Remembrance pieces, such as War is Hell.
3. Assemblies are curiously silent on Bedford and Blackburn but Bengal and Barbados can be found elsewhere.
4. John Donne's "No Man is an Island" is fleetingly referred to here - more of his poetry is quoted in Kennedy, Gorman and Donne.