Author: Scott Mannion

Enoch Powell speech on England.  Once or twice at most in a lifetime a man ought to be allowed, as you have done me the honour to allow me tonight, to propose this toast. Introspection for a nation, as for an individual, is an unhealthy attitude unless it be sparingly practised; but from time to time and Englishman among other Englishmen may without harm, and even with advantage, seek to express I na spoken words just cause to praise his country. There was a saying, not heart today so often as formerly, “What do they know of England who only England knows?” It is a saying which dates. It has a period aroma, like Kipling’s Recessional, or the state rooms at Osborne. The period is that which the historian Sir John Seely, in a now almost forgotten at once immensely popular book, called “The Expansion of England”. In that incredible phase, which came upon the English unawares, as all true greatness comes unawares upon a nation, the power and influence of England expanded with the force and speed of an explosion. The strange & brief juncture of deep and invincible seapower with industrial potential brought the islands and the continents under the influence, I almost said under the spell, of England born and it was  the Englishman who carried with him to the Rockies or the North-west Frontier, to the Australian deserts or the African lakes, “the thoughts of England given”, who seemed to himself and to a great part of his countrymen at home to be the typical Englishman with the truest perspective of England.  That phase is ended, so plainly ended that even the generation born at its zenith, for whom the realisation is hardest, no longer deceive themselves, as to rue the fact. That power and that glory have vanished, as surely, if not tracelessly, as the Imperial fleet from wha waters of the spit-head; in the eye of history, no doubt as inevitably as “Nineveh and Tyre”, as Rome and Spain. Yet England is not as Nineveh and Tyre, nor as Rom, nor as Spain. Herodotus relates how Athenians, returning to their city after it had been sacked and burnt by Xerxes and the Persian army, were astonished to find alive and flourishing in the midst of the backend ruins, the sacred olive tree, the native symbol of their country. So we today at the heart of the vanished Empire, amid the fragments of demolished glory, seem to find like one of her own oak trees, standing and growing, the sap still rising from her ancient roots to meet the spring, England herself. Perhaps after all we know most of England “who only England know.” There was this deep, this providential difference between our Empire and those others, that of nationhood of the mother country remained through it all unaffected, almost unconscious of the strange fantastic structure built around her, — in modern parlance, “uninvolved” The citizenship of Rome dissolved into the citizenship of the ancient world; Spain learnt to live on the treasure of the Americas the Hapsburgs and the Hohenzollerns extended their policy with their power, But England, which took as an axiom that the American Colonies could not be represented in Parliament and had to confess that even Ireland was not to be assimilated, underwent no organic change as the mistress of a World Empire, so the continuity of her existence was unbroken when the looser connections which had linked her with distant continents and strange races fell away.  Thus our generation is like one which comes home again from years of distant wandering. We discover the affinities with earlier generations of English, generations before the “expansion of England”, who felt no country but this to be their own. We look upon the traces which they left with a new curiosity, the curiosity of finding ourselves once more akin with the old English. Backward goes our gaze, beyond the grenadiers and the philosophers of the eighteenth century, beyond the pikemen and the preachers of the seventeenth, back through the brash adventurous days of the first Elizabeth and the hard materialism of the Tudors, and there we find them at last, or seem to find them, in many a Village church, beneath the tall tracing of a perpendicular East window and the coffered ceiling of the chantry chapel. From the brass and stone, from the line and effigy, their eyes looks out at us, and we gaze into them, as if we could win some answer from their inscrutable silence. “Tell us what it is that binds us together”; show us the clue that leads through the thousands years; whisper to us the secret of this charmed life of England, that we in our time may know how to hold it fast.” What would they say? They would speak to us in our own English tongue, the tongue made for telling the truth in, tuned already to songs that haunt the hearer like the sadness of spring. They would tell us of that marvellous land, so sweetly mixes of opposites in climate that all the seasons of the year appear there in their greatest perfection; of the fields amid which they built their halls, their cottages, their churches, and where the same blackthorn showered its petals upon them as upon us; they would tell us, surely, of the rivers, the hills, and of the island costs of England. They would tell us too of a palaces near the great city which the Romans build at a ford of the River Thames, a palace with many chambers and one lofty hall, with angel faces carved on the hammer frames, to which men resorted out of all England to speak on behalf of their fellows, a thing called “Parliament”, and from that hall went out men with fur trimmed gowns and strange caps on their heads, to judge the same judgements, and dispense the same justice, to all the people of England. One thing above all they assuredly would not forget, Lancastrian or Yorkist, squire or lord, priest of layman they would point to the kingship of England, and its emblems everywhere visible, the immemorial arms, gules, three leopards or, though quartered of late with France, azure, three fleurs de list argent and older still, the crown itself, and the scepterd awe, in which Saint Edward the Englishman still seemed to sit in his own chair to claim the allegiance of all the English. Symbol, yet source of power; prison of flesh and blood, yet incarnation of the idea; the kingship would have seemed to them, as it seems to us, to embrace and express the qualities that are peculiarly England’s.  The unity of England, effortless and unconstrained, which accepts the unlimited supremacy of Crown in Parliament so naturally as not to be aware of it, the homogeneity so profound and embraced that the counties and the regions make it a hobby to discover their differences and assert their peculiarities. The continuity of England, which has brought this unity and this work gently about, in the unbroken light of the English nation over a thousand years and more is a phenomenon unique in history, the product of a specific set of circumstances like those which in biology are supposed to start by change a new line of evolution. Institutions which elsewhere are recents and artificial creations appear in England almost as works of nature, spontaneous and unquestioned. The deepest instinct of the Englishman — how the word “instinct” keeps forcing itself again and again! — Is for continuity; he never acts more freely, nor innovate more boldly than when he most is conscious of conserving of even reacting. For this continuous life of a united people in its island home spring, as from the soil of England, all that is peculiar in the gifts and the achievements of the English nation, its laws, its literate, its freedom, its self-discipline. All its impact on the outer world, in earlier colonies, in later pac Britannica, in government and lawgiving, in commerce and in thought, has glowered from impulses generated here. And this continuous and continuing life of England is symbolised and expressed, as by nothing else, by the English kingship. English it is , for all the leeks and thistles and shamrocks, the Stuarts and Hanoverians, for all the titles grafted upon it here and elsewhere, ‘her other realms and territories’, Headships of Commonwealths, and what not. The stock that received all these grafts is English, the sap that rises through it to the extremities rises from roots in English earth, the earth of England’s history.  We ought well to guard, as highly to honour, the parent stem of England, and its royal talismans for we know not what branches yet that wonderful tree will have the power to put forth. The enemy is not always violence and force: them we have withstood before and can again. The peril can also be indifference and humbug, which might squander the accumulated wealth of tradition and devalue our sacred symbolism to achieve some cheap compromise or some evanescent purpose. These are not thoughts or every day, nor words for every company; but on St. George’s even, in the Society of St. George, may we not fitly think and speak them, to renew and strengthen in our selves the resolves and the loyalties which English reserve keeps otherwise and best in silence.... Associate Producer Membership Required You must be a Associate Producer member to access this content.Join NowAlready a member? Log in here

The English Flag Above the portico a flag-staff, bearing the Union Jack, remained fluttering in the flames for some time, but ultimately when it fell the crowds rent the air with shouts, and seemed to see significance in the incident. — DAILY PAPERS. WINDS of the World, give answer! They are whimpering to and fro— And what should they know of England who only England know?— The poor little street-bred people that vapour and fume and brag, They are lifting their heads in the stillness to yelp at the English Flag! Must we borrow a clout from the Boer—to plaster anew with dirt? An Irish liar’s bandage, or an English coward’s shirt? We may not speak of England; her Flag’s to sell or share. What is the Flag of England? Winds of the World, declare! The North Wind blew:—“From Bergen my steel-shod vanguards go; I chase your lazy whalers home from the Disko floe; By the great North Lights above me I work the will of God, And the liner splits on the ice-field or the Dogger fills with cod. “I barred my gates with iron, I shuttered my doors with flame, Because to force my ramparts your nutshell navies came; I took the sun from their presence, I cut them down with my blast, And they died, but the Flag of England blew free ere the spirit passed. “The lean white bear hath seen it in the long, long Arctic night, The musk-ox knows the standard that flouts the Northern Light: What is the Flag of England? Ye have but my bergs to dare, Ye have but my drifts to conquer. Go forth, for it is there!” The South Wind sighed:—“From the Virgins my mid-sea course was ta’en Over a thousand islands lost in an idle main, Where the sea-egg flames on the coral and the long-backed breakers croon Their endless ocean legends to the lazy, locked lagoon. “Strayed amid lonely islets, mazed amid outer keys, I waked the palms to laughter—I tossed the scud in the breeze— Never was isle so little, never was sea so lone, But over the scud and the palm-trees an English flag was flown. “I have wrenched it free from the halliard to hang for a wisp on the Horn; I have chased it north to the Lizard—ribboned and rolled and torn; I have spread its fold o’er the dying, adrift in a hopeless sea; I have hurled it swift on the slaver, and seen the slave set free. “My basking sunfish know it, and wheeling albatross, Where the lone wave fills with fire beneath the Southern Cross. What is the Flag of England? Ye have but my reefs to dare, Ye have but my seas to furrow. Go forth, for it is there!” The East Wind roared:—“From the Kuriles, the Bitter Seas, I come, And me men call the Home-Wind, for I bring the English home. Look—look well to your shipping! By the breath of my mad typhoon I swept your close-packed Praya and beached your best at Kowloon! “The reeling junks behind me and the racing seas before, I raped your richest roadstead—I plundered Singapore! I set my hand on the Hoogli; as a hooded snake she rose, And I flung your stoutest steamers to roost with the startled crows. “Never the lotus closes, never the wild-fowl wake, But a soul goes out on the East Wind that died for England’s sake— Man or woman or suckling, mother or bride or maid— Because on the bones of the English the English Flag is stayed. “The desert-dust hath dimmed it, the flying wild-ass knows, The scared white leopard winds it across the taintless snows. What is the Flag of England? Ye have but my sun to dare, Ye have but my sands to travel. Go forth, for it is there!” The West Wind called:—“In squadrons the thoughtless galleons fly That bear the wheat and cattle lest street-bred people die. They make my might their porter, they make my house their path, Till I loose my neck from their rudder and whelm them all in my wrath. “I draw the gliding fog-bank as a snake is drawn from the hole, They bellow one to the other, the frighted ship-bells toll, For day is a drifting terror till I raise the shroud with my breath, And they see strange bows above them and the two go locked to death. “But whether in calm or wrack-wreath, whether by dark or day, I heave them whole to the conger or rip their plates away, First of the scattered legions, under a shrieking sky, Dipping between the rollers, the English Flag goes by. “The dead dumb fog hath wrapped it—the frozen dews have kissed— The naked stars have seen it, a fellow-star in the mist. What is the Flag of England? Ye have but my breath to dare, Ye have but my waves to conquer. Go forth, for it is there!”... Associate Producer Membership Required You must be a Associate Producer member to access this content.Join NowAlready a member? Log in here

NOT in the camp his victory lies     Or triumph in the market-place, Who is his Nation’s sacrifice     To turn the judgment from his folk. Happy is he who, bred and taught      By sleek, sufficing Circumstance—  Whose Gospel was the apparelled thoughts      Whose Gods were Luxury and Chance— Sees, on the threshold of his days,      The old life shrivel like a scroll,  And to unheralded dismays      Submits his body and his soul; The fatted shows wherein he stood      Foregoing, and the idiot pride,  That he may prove with his own blood      All that his easy sires denied— Ultimate issues, primal springs,      Demands, abasements, penalties—  The imperishable plinth of things      Seen and unseen, that touch our peace. For, though ensnaring ritual dim      His vision through the after-years,  Yet virtue shall go out of him—      Example profiting his peers. With great things charged he shall not hold      Aloof till great occasion rise,  But serve, full-harnessed, as of old,      The Days that are the Destinies. He shall forswear and put away      The idols of his sheltered house  And to Necessity shall pay      Unflinching tribute of his vows. He shall not plead another’s act,      Nor bind him- in another’s oath  To weigh the Word above the Fact,      Or make or take excuse for sloth. The yoke he bore shall press him still,      And, long-ingrained effort goad  To find, to fashion, and fulfil      The cleaner life, the sterner code. Not in the camp his victory lies—      The world (unheeding his return)  Shall see it in his children’s eyes      And from his grandson’s lips shall learn !... Associate Producer Membership Required You must be a Associate Producer member to access this content.Join NowAlready a member? Log in here

“Certain it is men have fallen upon each other from the first. This is a business which the Gods lay upon the Young; leaving the Old to weary with words the unreturning phalanx.” What put the idea of drill into man’s head at the beginning of things? As Shakespeare so beautifully observes, “What made man first drill upon the Square, with Sergeants running round and round?”… what does drill come to? This—the step, which includes keeping step—the line, by which I mean any sort of line, close or extended—the wheel, which includes a line changing direction—and, most important of all, because it is the foundation that makes every move possible, forming fours. There you have it all, gentlemen—the four sides of the Magic Square. The Step and keeping step—the Line, close or extended—Wheeling and changing direction—and Forming Fours. S.W.L.F. So We Learned Fighting. Side by side with the practical drill, or rehearsal for the business of hunting and war, there developed the rudiments of what, later on, became ceremonial drill. Why? Here is my reason. The natural instinct of a man, after he has done anything worth talking about, is to talk about it; and Primordial man was extremely natural. When he had finished a successful day’s hunting or had cleverly knocked an enemy on the head, he went home and told his wife and the children all about it. Like all persons with a limited vocabulary, he had to act most of his story and piece it out, precisely as children do, with innumerable repetitions of the same word. His tale wouldn’t grow less in the telling. Tales don’t. His actual fight was probably a crude affair; but he would act it at home before the family with stately leaps and bounds to represent the death-scuffle, and with elaborate wavings of his club and thrustings with his lance to show how he did his man in. At the end of his story there would certainly be a solemn walk round the fire to let the females admire him and the young bloods be impressed with him. You can take it that when a male animal has accomplished a kill of any kind, he generally indulges in a sort of triumphal demonstration—a tense, highly braced walk or promenade round and above the carcass, especially if there is a female of his species near by. At the very first, he was only the hairy, low-browed head of a family, he would declaim and prance alone. Later, as the families grew into groups and tribes, the other men who had assisted at the hunt or the battle would have their say, and their shout, and their walk-round, in the open spaces before the caves. It may be that the idea of forming fours was first originated at those processional walk-rounds where there was open space to manœuvre and safety in which to correct errors. You can imagine how, as these men danced and leaped, they would all sing like children: “This is the way we kill a bison. This is how we stand up to a tiger. This is how we tackle men.” The drama would be accepted as the real thing by the women and the juniors, till at last the bison, or the tiger, or the man-killing charade would become a religious ceremonial—a thing to be acted, said, or sung before going up to battle or chase, with invoca tions to great hunters in the past, and so on. It would end by being a magic ritual, sure to bring good luck if it was properly performed. And so far as that ritual, with its dances, and chants, and stampings, and marches round, gave the men cohesion and confidence, it would go far towards success in the field. That principle holds good to this day. I was at Edinburgh Castle a few weeks ago, watching a squad marching in slow time, and doing it rather badly. The instructor told ’em so. Then he said: “You’re lazy! You’re lazy! Point that toe! There’s not a fut among ye!” It is hard work trying to get recruits to reproduce in cold blood, on a cold morning, in cold boots, something of the wonderful grace and poise and arrested motion of the bare-footed, perfectly balanced, perfectly healthy primitive man rejoicing over his kill. The nearest thing I ever saw to the genuine article must have been sham-fight among Kaffirs in a compound at the Kimberley Diamond-fields. It finished with a walk-round in slow time, and I remember that every Kaffir’s foot shot out as straight as the forefoot of a trotting horse. You could almost hear the hip and knee and ankle joint click as the toe was pointed. Now, it’s a far cry from a Kaffir compound to a Guard Mount at Buckingham Palace; but if you stand three-quarters on to the Colours as they come out of the gate with the Guard, you’ll catch just a far-off shadow of what the march in slow time originally sprung from, and what it meant. …Pass on a few thousand, or hundred thousand years, and we reach the beginnings of some sort of civilisation. By this time man has begun to specialise in his work. Everybody doesn’t hunt; everybody doesn’t fight; everybody doesn’t prepare his own food or make his own weapons for himself. Experience has shown mankind that it is more convenient to tell off certain men for these duties. Here we come to a curious fact in human nature. As soon as any man is detailed for a particular job—that is to say, a duty that he has to perform for somebody else’s sake—he gets, whether he likes it or not, the beginnings of an ideal of conduct. He may loathe the job; but that reasoning mind that I’ve mentioned makes him uncomfortable in himself if he neglects the job. The worst of it is that any being who knows what he is doing, remembers what he has done, and can estimate the probable consequence of what he is going to do, knows also what he ought to do. That’s the beginning of Conscience. I grant you it’s an infernal nuisance; but it’s true. As a compensation, all men have a tendency to glorify and make much of their own special duty, no matter how humble they or the job may be. But the primitive warrior was far from humble. He was a man set apart by his strength, skill, or courage, for work on which the very existence of his tribe depended. As such, he was entitled to extra or more varied rations in order that he might do that work properly. Primitive tribes at the present day have long lists of certain foods and special portions of game which are forbidden to be eaten by the women, or by the men before they come to manhood. The fighting men of the tribe are freed from any restrictions on this head, and the best cuts and joints are reserved for them—like the Captain’s Wing. Three years ago, scientific men called these restrictions the outcome of savage superstition. Now, we have food-regulations of our own, and, you will observe, the rationing of the Army and Navy is the most important matter of all, because the safety of the tribe depends upon it. Besides these advantages, the primitive fighting man had behind him an enormous mass of tradition and ritual, and song and dance and ceremony handed down through generation to generation from prehistoric days, which dealt with everything that he did in the performance of his duties or in the preparation for his duties. The crude drills and hunting rehearsals of George Robey’s time had developed into complicated sacred dances of fabulous antiquity. Every detail connected with war had its special rite or incantation. The warrior himself, his clothes, the paints he used for personal decoration, his weapons, his form of attack, his particular fashion of marking or mutilating his enemy after death, his war-cry, the charms that protected him in battle—were all matters of the deepest importance on which the best brains of mankind had spent centuries and centuries of thought, with the object—conscious or unconscious—of creating and improving the morale of the individual set apart to fight for the tribe. To-day, these rituals have faded out of the memory of civilised mankind altogether. But, in spite of time and change, one can still trace in our modern days shadows here and there of customs and ceremonial dating from the birth of time—customs which still persist among us because, mark you, they concern the individual and collective morale of the warrior—the man set apart to fight for the safety of the tribe. I give you three instances. I. It is an offence to draw one’s sword in Mess, just as it is a gross liberty to examine or handle any man’s sword without first asking his permission. Why? Because the Sword is, above all weapons, the most ancient and most holy. Why? Because it was the terrible weapon with the cutting edge and the thrusting point which first superseded the stick and the club among mankind, and gave the tribes that had it power over the tribes that had not. The old fairy-tales of magic swords that cut off people’s heads of themselves run back to that dim and distant date when some sword-using tribe broke in upon and scuppered some tribe of club-using primitives. Through thousands and thousands of years the Sword—the manufactured weapon which cannot be extemporised out of a branch, like the club; nor out of a branch and a strip of leather or sinew like the bow—this expensive hand-made Sword has been personal to its owner, slung to his body by day, ready to his hand by night, a thing prayed over and worshipped—the visible shrine, so to speak, of the personal honour of the man who wielded it—the weapon set apart for the man who is set apart for the business of war. II. It is an offence to mention a woman’s name in Mess. Why? Because the warrior’s work being war, and the one thing furthest from war being woman, it follows that at no time since fighting began was the warrior encouraged to think of women while preparing for, or engaged in, his job. Because, when the warrior went to war, he was forbidden—as he is forbidden to-day among savages—to have anything to do with women for a certain length of time before starting. The idea of women, and therefore, the name of any woman, was considered distracting, weakening, to a warrior, and for that reason was absolutely forbidden—tabu—to him not only in the field, but also in his ceremonial gatherings with his equals—the men set apart for the business of war. III. It is extraordinarily difficult to prevent ragging in the Army. Why? Because as soon as men were set apart for the work of fighting, it was necessary for them to find out the character, powers of endurance, and resistance to pain of the young men who from time to time joined them. For that reason, there grew up all the world over, a system of formally initiating young men into the tribe by a series of tests, varying in severity, which ranged—as they do among primitive tribes to-day—from mere flogging to being hung, head down, over smoke, burning on various parts of the body, or being swung from the ground by hooks inserted through their muscles. There were also other tests—spiritual as well as physical. You can see a trace of them in the mediaeval idea of the candidate for knighthood watching his arms before the altar of a church, generally full of tombs, from sunset to sunrise. Men reasoned logically enough: “If a man can’t stand our peacetime tests, he’ll fail us in war. Let’s see what he can stand.” Nowadays, young men argue—or, rather, they don’t argue, they feel: “So-and-so looks rather an ass; or is rather a beast; or carries too much side. Let’s rag him.” Then they turn his room inside out, or rub harness-paste into his hair, or sit him in a bath, or make him dance the fox-trot, as the case may be. If he loses his temper he falls in their opinion. If he keeps it, and pays back the rag with interest later on, they say he is a good sort. I’m not defending ragging—I’ve known cases where everyone who took part in it ought to have been R.T.U. 2 I’m only giving you the primitive reason for the performance which to-day has been watered down into a “rag”. It rose out of a test that was of vital importance to the men who were set apart for the business of war. I have tried to make clear that even from the earliest ages, the warrior has been a man set apart for a definite purpose, and surrounded by a definite ritual from which, as you know, he is not permitted to escape. The reason for this is very simple. I will summarise it. The earliest drill was born of the tactics, first of hunting, then of war. The notion of hunting and fighting in accordance with some preconceived plan—that is to say, an ideal of conduct—was developed and taught in the ceremonial drills and dances before and after hunting and fighting. Then came the period of specialisation, when certain men fought for the tribe—in other words, offered themselves as sacrifices for the tribe. They hoped, of course, to sacrifice the enemy; but if they failed in that, their own bodies, their own lives, would be the sacrifice. People who think a great deal and know very little will tell you that mankind, as a rule, don’t take kindly to the idea of sacrificing themselves unless there is an advantage to be gained from it. But it is worth noting that there is hardly any people in the world so degraded that it cannot appreciate the idea of sacrifice in others, and there are few races or tribes in the world whose legends of their origin or whose religion does not include the story of some tremendous sacrifice made by a hero or demi-god for their sakes. Most of the stories describe at length how the hero or demi-god prepared himself for the sacrifice. Now, if you think for a moment, you will see that there were only two people in the tribe who were permanently and officially concerned in the theory and practice of sacrifice. They were the Priest, who was also the doctor or the medicine man; and the fighting-man. The Priest knew the charms and spells that would protect the warrior from hurt in battle, as well as the herbs and dressings that would cure him if he were hurt. Most important of all, he knew how the warrior would stand with the Gods of the tribe after his death. If he had died well, the Gods would be pleased. If he had died badly, the Gods would be angry. In other words, whatever ideals of conduct existed in the tribe, the Priest upheld them. The Priest sacrificed fruits, animals, or human beings to the spirits of the great hunters and fighters of old. And because savages are not infidels, he sacrificed also to the unknown gods, who are above all the demi-gods. But the warrior, remember, stood ready to sacrifice himself. He more than any other needed preparation and setting apart for his task. If one compares the ritual and the code of conduct required of the Priest with that required of the warrior, one is struck by the curious likeness between them, even at the present time. The good Priest is required to offer up prayer several times a day, wherever he may be. This is to remind him that he is in a service. Twice a day in peace-time the Soldier has to appear on parade; and the more desolate and God-forsaken his station or post is, the more strict and formal ought the parade to be—for the good of his soul! Most religions demand that the Priest shall be clean and purified by actual or ceremonial washing before he can take part in any service or sacrifice. I needn’t tell you what happens to the Soldier who appears on parade in a condition which is technically called “dirty”. The textbooks say that cleanliness and neatness of clothing make for “smartness”. They don’t inform us what “smartness” signified originally. It meant the absolute cleanliness and purity, so far as was possible, of the man who might himself be the sacrifice for his tribe. Again, the good Priest is responsible not only for the proper use but for the proper care and keeping of the linen, the vestments, the vessels, the images, and the lights employed in the ritual of his religion. Every one of them must be dealt with, handled, and put away in a certain prescribed manner with certain prescribed motions, that the priest may not at any time be led to treat them as common things. Has anyone here ever had to attend kit-inspection? Well, the earliest kit-inspection began when the earliest hunter or warrior laid out his poor little weapons, his charms, and his food-pouch on the ground in front of him, counted them, and prayed over them, for they were all he had to take him through life. I’ve never heard of any man praying at kit-inspection since—unless he prayed that the inspecting officer might be struck blind. Once more, at any hour of the day or night, the good Priest must leave whatever he is doing, so long as it is not the service of his God, and go to any member of his flock who needs him, on the death-bed, or the sick-bed, in trouble of mind, family quarrel, misfortune, or weariness of spirit. So I have seen an Officer put down his drink untasted—the first in twelve hours—and go off to see that his men were properly settled in their billets and lacked nothing that his help or his authority could supply them. Lastly, however often the Priest enters, leaves, or crosses the holy building of his faith, he must pay due acknowledgement and reverence to the altar or the shrine there. This is that he may not forget, however busy he is, the Spirit Whom he serves. I watched an old Priest in Italy once tidying up an empty church. He knelt and crossed himself before the altar twenty-three times in half an hour as he pottered about. When the war was young, I walked once with a private soldier in London, and he told me what drove him nearly crazy was what he called the “incessant, foolish, unnecessary, snobbish” saluting. I told the young ’un what I am telling you now—that the Salute was the most important and ancient piece of symbolism invented for the deepest of spiritual reasons, many, many thousand years ago. Originally, it must have been the right hand of the armed man raised high to testify to a companion that he was there. “Behold me! I am the sacrifice.” In the course of years the violent gesture has been softened down—except among children at school when they want to show that they know the answer to a question. The hand has been dropped to the level of the forehead; but you will observe that the palm of the hand is turned outwards. That is the sign of giving, not of keeping back. If the Salute were, or ever had been a sign of servility, the palm of the hand would have been turned to the inside and slightly hollowed, and the head also would have been bent forward; because that attitude is the immemorial instinctive sign of abasement, which is fear, among all the races of mankind. As it is, the gesture of the Salute is no more than the armed man indicating himself as one of the brotherhood of the sacrifice, and, curiously enough, the higher-spirited the regiment, the keener its tradition and its instinct of service, the more tense and emphatic is the motion of the indicating right hand. Now, gentlemen, I have tried to give you the rough outline of how Drill was born; how it developed through untold ages; and a little of what it signifies. Many of my ideas will strike you as absurd and fantastic; but, if you think them over, you will see that they are at bottom only an expansion or explanation of the first few paragraphs of Infantry training. Things are said to change in the world. To a certain extent, they do; but the changes are largely confined to making wheels turn faster and throwing weights farther than our ancestors did. The one thing that does not change, as far as we know it, is human nature. What the earliest man faced at the beginning, we have to face now. There were wonders and terrors of death, darkness, fire and lightning, frost, blood, and destruction, all about him. He faced them with such weapons as were within his knowledge, and he supplemented his weapons with what skill and craft life taught him. But behind all was his indomitable soul, the spirit of man that knows what it ought to do, even though it loathes doing it, without which he would have fallen back to be a beast among beasts again. And, in the meantime, what has happened to the Magic Square I began to talk about? I’ve neglected it for a little. Before we dismiss, let’s t run over its outlines again on the blackboard, and make them clearer. Here, as I said, is the Line; here is the Step and the Wheel; and here, at the bottom, the foundation of all, is Forming Fours. You see? Do you notice any other change? There isn’t one, really, because, as I have said, man changes little; but it seems to me that the Magic Square has developed quite simply and naturally into the Altar of Sacrifice. Look! The letters are just the same: S.W.L.F. But the altar is based on Faith, by which we live; it is supported by Wisdom and Strength; and it is crowned by Sacrifice, which is the highest form of Love. So you see: Faith, Wisdom, Strength, and Love—make the Altar of Sacrifice for the Man set apart to save his Tribe.... Associate Producer Membership Required You must be a Associate Producer member to access this content.Join NowAlready a member? Log in here

“To catch Dame Fortune’s golden smile     Assiduous wait upon her, And gather gold by every wile     That’s justified by honour— Not for to hide it in a hedge     Nor for the train attendant, But for the glorious privilege     Of being independent.” Independence means, “Let every herring hang by its own head”. It signifies the blessed state of hanging on to as few persons and things as possible, and it leads up to the singular privilege of a man owning himself…  …Remember always that, except for the appliances we make, the rates at which we move ourselves and our possessions through space, and the words which we use, nothing in life changes. The utmost any generation can do is to rebaptize each spiritual or emotional rebirth in its own tongue. Then it goes to its grave hot and bothered, because no new birth has been vouchsafed for its salvation, or even its relief. And your generation succeeds to an unpromising and dishevelled heritage. In addition to your own sins, which will be numerous but quite normal, you have to carry the extra handicap of the sins of your fathers. This, it is possible that many of you have already made clear to your immediate circle. But the point you probably omitted (as our generation did when we used to deliver our magnificent, unpublished orations De Juventute) is, that no shortcomings on the part of others can save us from the consequences of our own shortcomings. The past few years have so immensely quickened and emphasised all means of communication, visible and invisible, in every direction, that our world—which is only another name for the Tribe—is not merely “too much with us”, but moves, shouts, and moralises about our path and our bed through every hour of our days and nights. Even a normal world might become confusing on these terms, and ours is far from being normal. One-sixth of its area has passed bodily out of civilisation; and much of the remainder appears to be divided, with no consciousness of sin, between an earnest intention to make Earth Hell as soon as possible, and an equally earnest intention, with no consciousness of presumption, to make it Heaven on or before the same date. But you will have ample opportunities of observing this for yourselves. The broad and immediate result—partly through a recent necessity for thinking and acting in large masses, partly through the instinct of mankind to draw together and cry out when calamity hits them, and very largely through the quickening of communications—is that the power of the Tribe over the individual has become more extended, particular, pontifical, and, using the word in both senses, impertinent, than it has been for many generations. Some men accept this omnipresence of crowds; some may resent it. It is to the latter that I am speaking. The independence that was a “glorious privilege” in Robert Burns’s day is now more difficult to achieve than when one had merely to overcome a few material obstacles and the rest followed almost automatically. Nowadays, to own oneself in any decent measure, one has to run counter to a gospel, and to fight against its atmosphere; and an atmosphere, so long as it can be kept up, is rather cloying. Even so, there is no need for the individual who intends to own himself to be too pessimistic. Let us, as our forefathers used, count our blessings. You, my constituents, enjoy three special ones. First, thanks to the continuity of self-denial on the part of your own forbears, the bulk of you will enter professions and callings in which you will be free men—free to be paid what your work is worth in the open market, irrespective of your alleged merits or your needs. Free, moreover, to work without physical molestation of yourself or your family as long and as closely as you please; free to exploit your own powers and your own health to the uttermost for your own ends. Your second blessing is that you carry in your land’s history and in your hearts the strongest instinct of inherited continuity, which expresses itself in your passionate interest in your own folk and all its values…  …at intervals your culture, more than others, feels the necessity for owning itself. Therefore, it returns in groups to its heather, where, under camouflage of “games” and “gatherings”, it fortifies itself with the rites, passwords, raiment, dances, food, and drink of its ancestors and reinitiates itself into its primal individualism… And that same strength is your third and chief blessing. I have already touched on the privilege of being broken by birth, custom, precept, and example to “doing without things”. There is where the sons of the small houses, who have borne the yoke in their youth, hold a cumulative advantage over those who have been accustomed to life with broad margins. Such men can, and do, accommodate themselves to straitened circumstances at a pinch and for an object; but they are as aware of their efforts afterward as an untrained man is aware of his muscles on the second morning of a walking-tour; and when they have won through what they consider hardship they are apt to waste good time and place by subconsciously approving, or even remembering, their own efforts. On the other hand, the man who has been used to shaving, let us say, in cold water at seven o’clock the year round, takes what one may call the minor damnabilities of life in his stride without either making a song about them or writing home about them. And that is the chief reason why the untrained man always has to pay more for the privilege of owning himself than the man trained to the little things. It is the little things, in microbes or morale, that make us, as it is the little things that break us. Also, men in any walk of life who have been taught not to waste or muddle material under their hand are less given to muddle or mishandle moral, intellectual, and emotional issues than men whose wastage has never been checked, or who look to have their wastage made good by others. The proof is plain. Among the generations that have preceded you at this University were men of your own blood—many, and many—who did their work on the traditional sack of peasemeal or oatmeal behind the door—weighed out and measured with their own hands against the cravings of their natural appetites. These were men who intended to own themselves, in obedience to some dream, teaching, or word which had come to them. They knew that it would be a hard and long task, so they set about it with their own iron rations on their own backs: and they walked along the sands here to pick up driftwood to keep the fire going in their lodgings. Now what, in this world or the next, can the world, or any Tribe in it, do with or to people of this temper? Bribe them by good dinners to take larger views on life? They would probably see their hosts under the table first and argue their heads off afterward. Offer ’em money to shed a conviction or two? A man doesn’t lightly sell what he has paid for with his hide. Stampede them or coax them or threaten them into countenancing the issue of false weights and measures? It is a little hard to liberalise persons who have done their own weighing and measuring with broken teacups by the light of tallow candles. No! Those thrifty souls must have been a narrow and an anfractuous breed to handle; but, by their God, in Whose Word they walked, they owned themselves! And their ownership was based upon the truth that if you have not your own rations you must feed out of your Tribe’s hands: with all that that implies. Should any of you care to own yourselves on these lines your insurances ought to be effected in those first ten years of a young man’s life, when he is neither seen nor heard. This is the period—one mostly spends it in lodgings alone—which corresponds to the time when man in the making began to realise that he was himself and not another. The post-war world which discusses so fluently and frankly the universality and cogency of Sex as the dominant factor of life has adopted a reserved and modest attitude in its handling of the imperious and inevitable details of mere living and working. I will respect that attitude. The initial payments on the policy of one’s independence, then, must be financed, by no means for publication, but as a guarantee of good faith towards oneself, primarily out of the drinks that one does not too continuously take; the maidens in whom one does not too extravagantly rejoice; the entertainments that one does not too systematically attend or conduct; the transportation one does not too magnificently employ; the bets one does not too generally place, and the objects of beauty and desire that one does not too generously buy. Secondarily, those revenues can be added to by extra work undertaken at hours before or after one’s regular work, when one would infinitely rather rest or play. That involves the question of how far you can drive yourself without breaking down, and if you do break down how soon you can recover and carry on again. This is for you to judge, and to act accordingly. No one regrets—no one has regretted—more than I that these should be the terms of the policy. It would better suit the spirit of the age if personal independence could be guaranteed for all by some form of co-ordinated action combined with public assistance and so forth. Unfortunately, there are still a few things in this world that a man must manage for himself; his own independence is one of them; and the obscure, repeated shifts and contrivances and abstentions necessary to the manufacture of it are too personal and intimate to expose to the inspection of any Department, however sympathetic. If you have a temperament that can accommodate itself to cramping your style while you are thus saving, you are lucky. But, any way, you will be more or less uncomfortable until it presently dawns on you that you have put enough by to give you food and housing for, say, one week ahead. It is both sedative and anti-spasmodic—it makes for calm in the individual and forbearance towards the Tribe—to know that you hold even seven days’ potential independence in reserve—and owed to no man. One is led on to stretch that painfully extorted time to one month if possible; and as one sees that this is possible, the possibilities grow. Bit by bit, one builds up and digs oneself into a base whence one can move in any direction, and fall back upon in any need. The need may be merely to sit still and consider, as did our first ancestors, what manner of animal we are; or it may be to cut loose at a minute’s notice from a situation which has become intolerable or unworthy; but, whatever it may be, it is one’s own need, and the opportunity of meeting it has been made by one’s own self. After all, yourself is the only person you can by no possibility get away from in this life, and, may be, in another. It is worth a little pains and money to do good to him. For it is he, and not our derivatively educated minds or our induced emotions, who preserves in us the undefeated senior instinct of independence. You can test this by promising yourself not to do a thing, and noticing the scandalous amount of special pleading that you have to go through with yourself if you break your promise. A man does not always remember, or follow up, the great things that he has promised himself or his friends to do; but he rarely forgets or forgives when he had promised himself not to do even a little thing. This is because man has lived with himself as an individual vastly longer than he has lived with himself under Tribal conditions. Consequently, facts about his noble solitary self and his earliest achievements had time to get well fixed in his memory. He knew he was not altogether one with the beasts. His amazing experiences with his first lie had shown him that he was something of a magician, if not a miracle-worker; and his first impulse towards self-denial for ends not immediately in sight must have been a revelation of himself to himself as stupendous as a belief in a future life, which it was possibly intended to herald. It is only natural, then, that individuals who first practised this apparently insane and purposeless exercise came later to bulk in the legends of their tribe as demigods, who went forth and bearded the gods themselves for gifts—for fire, wisdom, or knowledge of the arts. But one thing that stands outside exaggeration or belittlement, through all changes in shapes of things and the sounds of words, is the bidding, the guidance that drives a man to own himself and upholds him through his steps on that road. The bidding comes, direct as a beam of light, from that past when man had grown into his present shape, which past, could we question it, would probably refer us to a past immeasurably remoter still, whose creature, not yet man, felt within him that it was not well for him to jackal round another brute’s kill, even if he went hungry for a while. It is not such a far cry from that Creature, howling over his empty stomach in the dark, to the Heir of all the Ages counting over his coppers in front of a cookshop to see if they will run to a full meal—as some few here have had to do; and the principle is the same—“At any price that I can pay, let me own myself”. And the price is worth paying if you keep what you have bought. For the eternal question still is whether the profit of any concession that a man makes to his Tribe, against the light that is in him, outweighs or justifies his disregard of that light. A man may apply his independence to what is called worldly advantage, and discover too late that he laboriously has made himself dependent on a mass of external conditions for the maintenance of which he sacrificed himself. So he may be festooned with the whole haberdashery of success, and go to his grave a castaway. Some men hold that the risk is worth taking. Others do not. It is to these that I have spoken. “And make the council of thy heart to stand; for there is none more faithful unto thee than it. For a man’s soul is sometime wont to bring him tidings; more than seven watchmen that sit on high on a watch-tower.”... Associate Producer Membership Required You must be a Associate Producer member to access this content.Join NowAlready a member? Log in here

“Charge the free-born sons with The Power to resist, imbue them with the spirit of heroic ages, lost; crown them with that which was stolen in First Light’s lies. Birthright of The Sovereignful, all crowned. I’ll call on Him to Knight thee: flesh made spirit, to bear its mighty weight.” “It is my duty. It is His will. It is thine blade. Begins a gentle candle in the darkest sea. To be, but to be: raging beacon, iridescent, shield for the truthful, sword for true Chosen, courage English courage to bleed that final night.”... Associate Producer Membership Required You must be a Associate Producer member to access this content.Join NowAlready a member? Log in here

“Thus An Aged Father Taught His Free-born Son”: Anglo-saxon Precepts. Thus an aged father taught his free-born son,  a mind-wise man, elderly in virtue of his kinsmen,  in perceptive words, so that he was well proud: (ll. 1-3) “Always do what best avails you, and your work will succeed.  God will always be yours, belonging to every good man  your master and comfort—the Fiend is for the others,  the worse workman. Hope for the better,  even this courage, always so long as you live.  Cherish your father and mother with your heart,  and every one of your kindred, so long as they love the Measurer.  Always be gracious to your elders, fair-worded,  and let your teachers be beloved in your spirit and mind,  those who would bolster you to good most eagerly.” (ll. 4-14) The elderly father soon challenged his son  a second time: “Keep dear this virtue!  Perform no crimes, nor ever tolerate them  in your friends or kinsmen, lest the Measurer  reproach you, as an abettor of such faults.  He may yield the punishment to you,  what belongs to others, to their prosperity.” (ll. 15-20) A third time the thought-wise man  instructed his son from his inmost treasury:  “Do not keep company with those beneath you,  to the width of your life, nor esteem any of them,  but take on that one who always speaks  in good news and teachings, counsel-minded.  About the rich, let it be just as it can be.” (ll. 21-26) A fourth time the father taught again  his mind-beloved son, so that he remembered this:  “Abandon not your most intimate friend,  but ever always keep him close—  as is rightly fitting. Perform this courtesy,  so that you never become vile to your own friend.” (ll. 27-31) A fifth time the father yet again began  to instruct his child by his breast-thoughts:  “Shelter yourself from drunken and daft words,  malicious in your mind, and lying in your mouth—  anger and spite and lechery for the ladies.  Therefore shame-minded he must often venture  who turns away from the love of his wife  for strange women. There will always be  an expectation of sin, a hateful shame—  an enduring malice towards God—  an overwhelming arrogance. Always be wise of your reasons,  wary against your desires, a warden of your words.” (ll. 32-42) A sixth time the benevolent man soon began  through blithe intentions to teach his child:  “Eagerly perceive what may be good or evil,  and distinguish them always sharp-mindedly  in your heart and ever choose the better.  It will always be parted for you—if your mind avails—  wisdom dwells within, and you know readily  the sense of evil, held against you stoutly—  care for the good in your spirit always.” (ll. 43-51) A seventh time the father taught his son,  an aged man, saying many things to the younger:  “Seldom will the wise man, though sorrowless, exult,  likewise will the fool rarely rejoice, filled with regrets,  about his destiny, unless he knows enmity.  Guarded in speech, a wisdom-fast warrior  must consider his heart, not all booming in voice.” (ll. 52-58) An eighth time the elderly father began  to admonish his son with mild words:  “Learn these precepts, suitable for instruction,  Hope for yourself in wisdom—and keep  the Shaper of Armies in your expectations,  mindful of his saints, and keep truth ever in your sight—  when you say what you say.” (ll. 59-64) A ninth time the old man addressed him,  the aged sage, saying to his own children:  “There are not many men who wish to keep  the ancient scriptures, but his mind decays,  his courage cools, discipline falling idle—  nor do they have any bit left over for that,  though they do disgrace instead of the Measurer’s commandment.  Many shall be rewarded with the soul’s torment.  Yet allow your inner heart to hold from now on  these olden writings and the judgments of the Master,  which men everywhere in this place abandon in their ambition  declining precipitously, when righteousness should be theirs.” (ll. 65-75) And for a tenth time, filled with miserable sorrows,  the older man soon began to instruct his heir:  “He enjoys wisdoms who for the love of his soul  always guards himself against disgrace of words  and deeds in his self-keeping and performs the truth—  every gift will be augmented for him, profitable  in power, when he flies away from wickedness. (ll. 76-82) “Don’t allow anger ever to control you,  cresting in your chest, or the ground of spiteful words,  to defile you with its welling-forth—  but your mind will keep him best in his heart.  A wise warrior must be moderate, keen of mind,  perceptive in his thoughts, eager for lore,  so he can gather his blessings among men. (ll. 83-89) “Don’t ever be a slanderer, nor a double-talker,  nor allow men to urge you to wickedness in your mind,  but be gracious instead, bearing a light breast-coffer  in your thoughts. And so you, my child, be mindful  of the teaching of your aged father—  and always keep yourself away from wickedness.” (ll. 90-94)... Associate Producer Membership Required You must be a Associate Producer member to access this content.Join NowAlready a member? Log in here