Check for web archive captures
Spring, Norouz, Newroz, World Water Day, Paschal
Season, Earth Day, Renewal, Hope and “What is a Lasting
Peace?”
By mickielynn on 2011-04-24 17:26:01
In this season that’s all about hope and renewal I thought that I’d share a fictional letter from The Wimsey Papers, published
in the Spectator magazine (England) in 1939 at the start of World War Two. Although these letters were written in the voices
of the characters of the Wimsey family they represented the thinking of Dorothy L. Sayers, one of the greatest of the golden
age detective novelists (born 1893). One of the first women to be awarded a degree by Oxford University, she was also the
author of several religious plays, especially The Man Born to Be King. She considered her translation of Dante’s Divine
Comedy to be her greatest work.
Since WWII is considered by many to be "the good war" it’s interesting to look back and see how it impacted this author and
philosopher who died in 1957. I wonder what she would have thought of our current world.
{Harriet Vane, Lady Peter Wimsey, to Lord Peter Wimsey, somewhere abroad. ]
176 November, 1939
...1’ve been trying to write an article about war-aims and peace-aims, though I’m not at all sure that all this definition
doesn t end by darkening counsel, on the principle of "Mummy, I think I might understand if only you wouldn t explain."
We all know pretty well that something we value is threatened, but when we try to say what, we’re left with a bunch of big
words like justice, freedom, honour, truth and so on that embarrass us because they’ve been misused so often they sound like
platform claptrap. And then there’s "peace". Peter I’m terrified by this reiterated demand for "enduring peace and lasting
settlement" — it’s far too like the "war to end all war." Do we really still persuade ourselves that there’s some final
disposition of things — territory, economic adjustment, political machinery —that will stabilise all human relationships by a
stroke of the pen? That the story can end in the old-fashioned way with wedding-bells: "so they married and lived happy
ever after"? If so, we need an Ibsen to deal with public life.
If one looks back at the last twenty years, one sees at how many points we might have prevented this war, if it hadn’t been
for our inflexible will to peace. We said "Never again". As though "never wasn’t the rashest word in the language. "River, of
thy water will I never drink!" We will never go to war again, we will revise all treaties in conference; we will never interfere
in other people’s wars, we will always keep the peace: - We wooed peace as a valetudinarian woos health, by brooding over
it till we became really ill. No wonder we couldn’t stand by the Covenant of the League, which set out to enforce peace by
making every local injustice an occasion for total war. That idea was either too brutal or too heroic, I’m not sure which. A
mistake, anyway. What I want to say is that there’s no hope of getting peace till we stop talking about it. But I don’t suppose
that view will be very popular! As for going into a terrifying conflict under the leadership of Neville Chamberlain — hoping
against hope that he will be better at war than he was at securing "peace in our time" — everyone says he was trying his best,
but his best might not be nearly good enough...
