"We have lived to see Europe degraded to a foul something which no image can so much as shadow forth...Every landmark has been submerged in an Atlantic of blood...We are gripped in the ancient bloodiness of that paradox which bids us kill life in order to save life."
Men such as Thomas Kettle were undaunted by what they saw before them, and allowed themselves to believe in the best of humanity, and the possibility of a world without war. In one of his last letters to his wife he wrote,
"I want to live, too, to use all my powers of thinking, writing and working, to drive out of civilisation this foul thing called War, and to put in its place understanding and comradeship."
Let us not forget this one man's dream.
Amen.
ReplyDeleteHi Colleen,
DeleteAn 'Amen' to your 'Amen'. The desire for understanding and comradeship could not want for more.
Cheers,
Jennifer
"I ask that you do not write something you could not say to me in person." Very well put. As a fellow blogger that is something I can relate to, given the amount of abusive posts I get from people who would not say "boo" in real life.
ReplyDeleteGood post, and it is about time that Irish people started thinking about their own citizens who died in the world wars.
Many of them fought for Redmond in the first, and for Home Rule, only to have the rug pulled out from under them by the Rising putschists and the over-reaction of the authorities, who guaranteed their place as "martyrs" for those who still march down the cul-de-sac of physical-force "republicanism" - an ideology that has done more than anything else to ensure this island will always be a divided one.
Hello Gombeen Man,
DeleteThank you for acknowledging my plea for civilized discourse. In my opinion venom from neither side of a question has ever solved anything. It places blinders on men, obscures rational thinking, and leads them to march down a single path, oblivious to all that is going on around them.
So too, it is sometimes too easy to judge the past through the optic of a privileged 21st century perspective. We are in a time in which ‘historical illiteracy’, so to speak, is the plague of our nation. Too many individuals are happy to trot out a barrel full of opinions, while having neither knowledge nor understanding of the whole history of the island of Ireland. Such thinking provides the foundation for hateful stereotypes and the same old ‘us vs. them’ dichotomy.
Those who best knew Thomas Kettle knew him as a man who saw himself as not just an Irishman, but as a European. Some six years before the war he wrote, “While a strong nation has herself for centre, she has the universe for circumference....My only counsel for Ireland is that to become deeply Irish, she must become European.”
Cheers,
Jennifer
a thoughful post as always Jennifer. We tend to remember the lives lost but every now and then what strikes me isthe loss of so much human potential like Kettle's wish to strike wa from our lives. How sad he never had a chance to follow his dream.
ReplyDeleteHello Pauleen,
DeleteThat is really at the heart of the matter isn't it? So much loss in these wars, so much unfulfilled human potential.
Cheers,
Jennifer
Beautifully written Jennifer and I couldn't agree more with Thomas Michael Kettle, and others who hold these same views. Many thanks, Catherine.
ReplyDeleteHi Catherine,
Delete'Understanding and comradeship', what more could we wish for? It makes me sad to think that after the passage of so much time, and with so much loss to war, such thinking seems only to exist in dreams.
Cheers,
Jennifer
Earlier this morning I asked my husband why the poppy appears on every remembrance I see from the British, etc. on Remembrance Day. I'm going to have to look up the significance. Your picture is outstanding as is your message.
ReplyDeleteHello Kathy,
DeleteYou've probably already looked this up, but I just thought I'd add the history I've uncovered about the use of the poppy as a symbol.
According to the Imperial War Museum in London England, the association of scarlet poppies with fallen soldiers developed out of the Napoleonic Wars of the early 19th century after which barren fields of battle were naturally transformed into fields of blood red poppies.
Apparently poppies grow quickly in conditions of disturbed earth. With the terrible destruction of World War I, in the fields of Northern France and Belgium, it was noted that once again the poppy was one of the only plants to grow on battlefields otherwise left barren by bombardment.
The symbol of the poppy was brought into popular imagination by the poem 'In Flanders Fields', written in 1915 by Canadian surgeon and soldier, Lieutenant Colonel John Alexander McCrae, and published after his death in 1918. In 1921, the poppy was adopted by The Royal British Legion as the symbol for their Poppy Appeal, a charity drive in aid of those who had served in the British Armed Forces.
The poppies and other wild flowers in my photograph grow nearby the home of a friend of mine in Rotterdam, Holland.
Cheers,
Jennifer