What moved me most about Remembrance Sunday is the thought that we shall never see their like again.
Plainly I do not mean by this that we shall never again see men willing to risk their lives in battle, since there are those still doing that, every day, in Iraq and Afghanistan. I salute them. But unlike their predecessors, the present lot are bravely and competently fulfilling a professional duty rather than - except in name - 'making the supreme sacrifice for Queen and Country'.
Certainly today's dead deserve praise for their courage. But I rather doubt whether patriotism is their inspiration, any more than patriotism is what makes miners risk their lives digging coal.
So it was not so much the tragic death of heroes that moved me last Sunday but rather the death of the nation - that sacred cause - for which
|
|
|
  |
Peregrine Worsthorne  |
|
The England for which our war heroes died was killed long ago by our modernising ways
|
|
|
|
those heroes died. The England they loved has been killed off not by an enemy but by our own modernising hands - a truth which the Queen's continuing presence at the Remembrance ceremony is intended to disguise.
This does not mean, of course, that there are no longer any great causes in the world - humanitarianism, environmentalism and, in America and some of the newly liberated countries, even an ardent nationalism itself - but only that England as a nation, still less Britain, is no longer one of them. Anyone with eyes to see, ears to hear, sensitivities and tastes to be offended or principles to be outraged, must be aware of this.
Arguably there is no more lovable hole to go to. But that is not much of a call to battle. Lost lives are sad enough: sadder still, alas, is a lost cause worth dying for. 
|
