Prayer for the Departed

 

"We waved, we shouted, we cheered, and all their brave boots rasped on the cobbles. We heard their songs and smiled, though where they were going was a longer way than Tipperary. Longer than miles to go. Longer even than now to then."

My brother and I had the great fortune of a tour of the Ypres salient, thanks to Glyn Johns and his remarkable frient Johann. As I stood among the parade-ground ranks of gravestones I was reminded of the words that I wrote in Prayer for the Departed, the final story of It Never Was Worthwhile.

I've been criticised for taking an idealist's view of the Great War. It's been suggested that I subscribe to the populist view of lions commanded by donkeys.

Neither is true, but I defend my title; war never was worthwhile. It's a tragic fact that it's sometimes unavoidable, even necessary. But the cost is always too high. We are guilty of two unforgiveable inventions: nation and religion. The notion that we, with our eighty-year nanosecond of life, can own a piece of land that existed four billion years before our existence is risible. The suggestion that, because we happened to be exposed to a certain set of doctrines, we alone will be chosen for paradise is unforgiveable.

To believe that either gives us the right to kill others is inconceivable.

Yet, throughout history that's what we've done. Again and again. We blame terrorists, we blame expansionist states but, until we understand that we are all to blame, the cemeteries will claim the land we die for.