The Battle of Quebec

Remembering the defeat of the rebels on this day in 1775.

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Kipling's Game

As has become an annual rite, we mark the birthdate of Rudyard Kipling, born December 30th, 1865. He was born in Bombay, which Hindu nationalists renamed Mumbai. We continue to call it Bombay. Because that is what my ancestors called it - Bom Baia, Good Bay - when they handled it over to the British, as dowry for Catherine of Braganza. It is the name the world knows it as, and as Kipling knew it. A century ago Rudyard Kipling was the most famous writer in the world. His poetry mattered, at that last moment in English speaking history when poetry itself still matter, before it lost rhyme and meter and became the purview of obscure minded academics.

Kipling wrote of merchants, mystics, engineers, statesmen and common foot soldiers. His identity was Anglo-Indian, as his parents and their generation of British derived residents described themselves. A century before Kipling's birth the adventurer Robert Clive, a youthful Shropshire hoodlum, achieved the conquest of much of the northeast of the continent. A large foothold that over the next half century was consolidated until either the British Crown, or the East India Company, controlled virtually the whole of the subcontinent.

Clive was the sort of fellow that could easily have fallen out of the pages of a Kipling story. By sheer will and guile he conquered a high civilization much older than his own. India a far larger place than Britain. Perhaps a hundred thousand 'Anglo-Indians' ruled over some three hundred million Indians in Kipling's time. The world they created was a bizarre, and fascinating, synthesis of the European and native cultures. The languages mixed and created a network of slang. An architecture both grand and obscene. Kipling was a foreigner, an Englishman, thoroughly immersed in this alien and brilliant culture. His most famous novel, Kim, the story of an Irish soldier's orphan wandering through India with his Lama mentor, had as its backdrop the Great Game.

The soldiers, statesmen and merchants that Kipling wrote about could look at a map of the neat and elongated triangle that is the Indian subcontinent. To its east and north lay the impenetrable Himalayas. To the North West lay the plains that stretch from modern Pakistan, up into the Hindu Kush, and finally reached Afghanistan. This strategically placed bit of nowhere lay to the south of the rapidly expanding Russian Empire. British colonial officials, with that bit of paranoid imagining which was their special gift, could see the Russian Bear storming down into the subcontinent, with only a few thousand redcoats and sepoys to stop them. They must be kept out. Afghanistan was the logical place. Three attempts were made to subdue the Afghan tribes to British rule. Two abysmal failures and one qualified success. The jostling of Russian and British agents for influence in Afghanistan acquired a moniker, the Great Game. It was the stuff of both Victorian Ian Fleming and Edwardian John le Carre. Its madness and seeming futility affected even Kipling, that keen though intelligent advocate of Empire.

In 1894 Her Majesty's Servants was published by Harper's Weekly. A short story it tells of Indian Army pack animals discussing the nature of war and life. It was a piece of Kiplingesque whimsy with a deeper point. The story revolves around a military review, marked for visit of an Afghan emir with the Viceroy of India. Though the Viceroy is never named, it is probably Lord Dufferin, who had earlier served as Governor-General in Canada. After the review is finished, one of the Amir's men questions an Indian Army officer:

Then I heard an old grizzled, long-haired Central Asian chief, who had come down with the Amir, asking questions of a native officer.

‘Now,’ said he, ‘in what manner was this wonderful thing done?’

And the officer answered, ‘There was an order, and they obeyed.’

‘But are the beasts as wise as the men?’ said the chief.

‘They obey, as the men do. Mule, horse, elephant, or bullock, he obeys his driver, and the driver his sergeant, and the sergeant his lieutenant, and the lieutenant his captain, and the captain his major, and the major his colonel, and the colonel his brigadier commanding three regiments, and the brigadier his general, who obeys the Viceroy, who is the servant of the Empress. Thus it is done.’

‘Would it were so in Afghanistan!’ said the chief; ‘for there we obey only our own wills.’

‘And for that reason,’ said the native officer, twirling his moustache, ‘your Amir whom you do not obey must come here and take orders from our Viceroy.’

So now do modern Viceroys, and modern Amirs, try to rule Afghanistan. The problem is still the same: "we obey only our own wills." This would seem to be an individualist cry. So it is, albeit very primitive. An individualist who is unwilling to submit, or can grasp, the principle of contract, either social or personal. An "individualist" who functions at short-range, by whim and will. The British colonial army of Kipling's day was all volunteer. Men who had willing bound themselves to its harsh discipline.

The war Canadians are fighting in Helmand is not against the primitive religious fanatics who once ruled there, and would rule again should the NATO forces fail in their task. They are fighting a mindset within the Afghan people, who have not yet been able to grasp the concept of "nation." A nation, in part, is a society of obedience without force. Whatever government may rule over a nation, that group of people wish to live together. One of the decisive advantages the Europeans had when they past the Cape of Good Hope was nationalism. Their ships were of better design, but not so much better. The Indians and Chinese had used gunpowder in war long before the Europeans. As Albuquerque and Clive made their made through the Byzantine world of Indian power politics, they could count on the loyalty and unity of the few men they had. It's a loyalty that Hamid Karzai has been unable to buy with all the wealth funnelled to him. It's a loyalty he sorely needs for today's Great Game.

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"so utterly right"

Marking the birth of a giant:

What has always struck me most about Gladstone is that he was so utterly right. He applied his massive brain to the problems that faced our country at a turbulent, and near-revolutionary, juncture in its history and almost always found the right answers. So complete was his self-confidence, and his determination to put his country before himself or his party, that he would propound and pursue policies even if they contradicted what he had hitherto believed: any loss of face was nothing to him compared with the damage he feared would be done to the national interest if the country continued to take the wrong course.



[...]

Three things seem to underpin his genius. The first is the economic policy. He understood that Peel was right to repeal the Corn Laws, and that by applying the principle of free trade more generally, Britain – then the workshop of the world – would become richer. This cast of mind found loud echoes in the north of England, notably in the Manchester liberalism of Cobden and Bright, from whom Gladstone borrowed much. What we now regard as the monuments of Victorian ambition – Manchester, Bradford or Leeds town halls, Joe Chamberlain's Birmingham, the Gothic revival buildings still to be seen all over London and other major cities – are monuments to Gladstone's vision. It was not just his belief in free trade: it was his recognition that a complicated structure of taxation could only impede prosperity. He understood what it would take monetarists another century to demonstrate again: that if you cut taxes, you raise more revenue, because of the provision of the incentive to work and take risks.

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There Will Always Be That England...

..and that England shall be charming:

To be more specific, in my case, it is old British films. I like old American films too, but a little of them goes a long way; and old French films are even better, but they represent an exoticism that goes beyond mere comfort. However, put me in front of a television with a black-and-white British film made at any point between about 1935 and 1960, and I am in heaven.

The England I love is not the England I live in; the England I love is in old films. I am sure it was an era of bad food, lower life expectancy, the reek of tobacco and what we would now call illiberalism, but I love it. I feel instinctively at home there. I understand the tones of voice. I understand the understatement. I understand the double-breasted suits, the pints of mild and bitter, the half-crowns and 10-bob notes, the trilbies, the cars with running boards and double declutching; and I can even suspend disbelief when the actors playing policemen all sound like Old Etonians of the period.

As indeed all policemen should sound.

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Messiah

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In the Bleak Midwinter

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Going Home For Christmas

So you're travelling home for the holidays. Going from King's Cross up to King's Lynn. You look over and who do you see? Why, the Queen.

‘The Queen on a First Capital Connect – unbelievable!’ exclaimed Andrew Smith, who was making the same journey for a business meeting.

‘My wife will never believe me.’ Relatively speaking there was minimal fuss, although some travellers reacted angrily when police shut off the area without warning five minutes before the train was due to leave.

The monarch, with a few attendants, sat at the rear of the train in an eight-seat section of a carriage which was separated from the rest of the seats by a sliding glass door.

The Mail duly notes:

The Queen does, of course, also have use of the Royal Train – but that costs taxpayers £57,142 each time it is taken out of its sidings.

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The Ministry of Silly Walks

So much of what the government does can be reduced to Monty Python's Ministry of Silly Walks, but nothing quite rises to the apex of absurdity as the goings-on in Copenhagen where 200 governments are requisitioning limosines from other parts of Europe to attend a global conference on climate change. In an age of video conferencing technology, Copenhagen has become the flying joke of grotesque global summitry.

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An Announcement

Gentlemen, I have an announcement to make.

Today, Friday, the 11th of December, the year of our Lord 2009, I signed and submitted my forms. In a few weeks, I shall be a member of Her Majesty's Canadian Forces. If all goes well, in a few months I shall enter the Royal Military College, holding the Queen's commission as an officer-cadet. A few years after that, if all goes well again, I shall exit with two university degrees, as an infantry officer. An officer of the line, as I might've been called in the days of lace-ruffles, perukes and brocade.

However, those days are long passed, and I shall fight not against an honourable enemy a few dozen yards away, but against a ruthless foe that fights with ambushes and roadside bombs and the cruelty of rusty knives. For Afghanistan is where I will go, if it isn't sorted out in four years (and I suspect that it won't be). Off to the Big Show, as my great-grandfather would've said back in the golden summer of 1914. Now, as then, the motivation for the men of my family to join the Army and fight for God, Queen and Country is noblesse oblige. I have lived all my life in comfort and privilege, and it is time that I earned it.

Gentlemen, sharing my thoughts and musings with you in this place has been a true honour. I will still try to write here, as often as I can, relating my progress in the Forces when I can. I raise my glass in toast to all you fine gentlemen, and as a soon-to-be officer and gentleman, I salute you all.

God save the Queen and Heaven bless the Maple Leaf Forever!
Gladstone

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Jeunesse Dorée

Boys all smartly turned out in their Eton collars

My Lord Gladstone, justifying his name, has contributed thoughts on The Youth, which I am just now reading.

Oh dear. How gloomy my generation is, by his account.

There are so MANY things wrong with today's youth, that I barely know where to begin.

Even to my socially liberal eyes, that dance floor appeared as a modern day Sodom or Gommorah to me.

Sex, Drugs and Alcohol are the Holy Trinity for these teenagers, Apathy is their Messiah, Kanye West and Lady Gaga are their Prophets. They have no reverence for anything, not their parents, nor their elders, nor their teachers, nor their country. They are interested only in themselves, and their hedonistic pleasures.

Well, yes, quite.

But however justified Mr. Gladstone's complaints, let us try and go a bit further.

Is it that my generation "has no reverence" and is interested "only in ourselves?"

Or is it that we have formless hopeful and compassionate impulses, which have failed yet to find an expression?

Church attendance is declining. As a confirmed, Mass-attending High Anglican, the twenty-something Dr. Swift blames not a decline in spirituality among his peers (crackpot religion has never been more popular). Rather, he fairly and squarely blames anaemic clergy, and spineless spiritual leaders.

God is attractive. Even His Church has moments of good press.

It's baby boomer clergy of the generation above me that make me feel like sleeping in on Sundays. As the wonderfully acid Alice Thomas Ellis put it, "the liberal clergy, confronted with the Cities of the Plain (Sodom and Gommorrah), perambulate about wringing their hands and intoning "We are all guilty..." The sermon at Evensong last week was ostensibly about Advent--Incarnate God, the Wrath To Come, the Great Deliverer.

What did we get?

Multiculturalism, and a few nice thoughts on Depression.

Could do better, one feels.

Likewise, there is a deep desire to serve others in my generation--they don't join the Scouts, or the Christian World Service, instead they shop at Trade Aid, they're deeply worried about African poverty--in fact, volunteerism is rising among the young--we're deeply worried about our fracturing society, just not sure what to do about it.

It's our parents who ran off to Woodstock.

Yes, of course we have too many people blown about by our feelings, and forgetful of our duty. But, for a generation raised on bromides about following our hearts, we aren't doing too badly. It's the Baby Boomers who knew what the Right Thing was and thought getting stoned was more fun.

Yes, there is too much promiscuity--but on the other hand, a deep desire for love, for sacrifice, for hope. Having been raised on Free Love, my generation now looks for the ties that bind.

Marriage is still an aspiration.

Period Dramas like Pride and Prejudice have never been more popular.

Even trashy novels like Twilight speak to the misdirected hope that there might be someone to love you forever.

ANZAC and Rememberance Day Services here have never been more popular, or more youthful.

There is a lot to criticise about The Youth Of Today, to be sure--and Mr. Gladstone is right about most of it. But given the culture we had to start with, the aspirations we have are good ones and noble ones, however incomplete.

Pope Benedict encouraged the young people of Genoa in these terms--his prescription is for youth and goodness to be joined together, for strength and energy to lie down with service:

To be young means to have discovered the things that do not pass away with the passing of the years. If a young person discovers the great and true values, then he will never grow old, even if the body follows its own laws.Stay young in your heart and you will radiate youth, which is to say, goodness. Yes, because goodness escapes the grip of time. That is why we can say that only he who is good and generous is truly young.

I wish you all to remain young, but not as fashion goes. Fashions fizzle out in a heartbeat, they burn out in frenetic pointless succession. But youth - the youth born of goodness - will remain. Indeed, it will be perfect and resplendent in Heaven, with God.It is beautiful to be young. Today, everyone wants to be young, to remain young, and many masquerade as young people, even if their youth has gone - visibly gone. But why is it beautiful to be young? Why this dream of perennial youth?

I think there are two decisive elements. One is that youth still has all of the future ahead. Everything is the future - the time of hope. And the future is full of promise, although today, it is also full of threats, especially the threat of great emptiness.

That is why many want to stop time, out of fear for a future of emptiness. They would want to consume all at once everything that is ‘beautiful’ in life - and so they burn out the candle at both ends even if their life has just begun.It is important to choose the true promises, those that will open up the future, even if it means renouncing certain things. Whoever chooses God will have, even in old age, a future without an end, and will fear no threats ahead.So choose well - do not destroy your future.

And the first choice should be God, who revealed himself in Jesus Christ. In the light of this choice which offers us a reliable companion on our journey, one can find the criteria for the other choices that one must make.To be young, as I said, means being good and generous. But once again: the true goodness is Jesus, the Jesus you know or that your heart is searching for. He alone is the friend who will never betray. He was faithful up to giving his life on the Cross.

Surrender to his love!

By the way, the open-air Mass for Young People at which he said this was full.

Golden Youth indeed.

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Tony Abbott: Why I Am a Monarchist

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Abbott for Australia

Hey, did you hear the news? They actually picked a monarchist to lead Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition in Australia. A true believer. Good stuff.

I've always wanted to say this, so here goes: To Down Under I say, a tip of the hat, a slap on the back and a pint on the house. Cheers, Big Ears!

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The Changing of the Guard

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Thoughts on the Youth

It has often been said that our youth is the future. If that is true, it would explain why the future seems so depressing these days. Now, every single generation has moaned and groaned and complained about the next generation's problems. How they 'just don't know anything', and all that. However, it would seem that this generation is dealing with that more than any before it. Though they had their fair share of problems and idiosyncracies, the youth of the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s could generally be depended upon to become upstanding members of society. Today though...

There are so MANY things wrong with today's youth, that I barely know where to begin. So, let me begin at the place where my thoughts on this matter began: A school dance. Not my school, no, I passed beyond there some time ago. The parents of a young relation of mine were out of town or otherwise engaged, so I was called upon to chaperone for a school dance. Being that this was a Grade 8 dance, a sockhop as it would've once been called, I expected generally reserved, quiet behavior, as the young boys and girls would still be somewhat shy of each other. At least, that was the way it was when I was their age. The evening was divided into shifts of an hour or two for the parents, and I took one of the middle shifts, thus I arrived sometime after the dance had gotten into the swing of things.

Swing of things indeed! What a horror I saw there. Even to my socially liberal eyes, that dance floor appeared as a modern day Sodom or Gommorah to me. Boys and girls, on 12 or 13 years old, grinding together as frantically as the 20-somethings in any nightclub. Grabbing and groping and caressing each other like people twice or even three times their age. I stepped out into the hallway for some air, only to find a few sallow youths drinking vodka that I assume they had stolen from their parents. And the things that were coming out of their mouths! Cussing and language such as to make the saltiest sergeant-major blush. One of the sallow youths and a young girl, painted like a harlot akin to Paris Hilton, walked hand-in-hand into the men's washroom. Being the chaperone, I followed them in (after confiscating the vodka from the others, and sternly told them to stay put), and found them with their tongues down each other's throats, apparently intending to fornicate like rabbits. I quickly put an end to that and called the parents of all the children involved, to get them taken home. I then returned to the gymnasium, to watch the boys and girls continue to grind to the thumping beats of "I Gotta Feeling", a piece by a band named after some kind of pea if I recall correctly.

Even today, days after that unfortunate dance, I'm still disgusted by the conduct of today's youth. What has happened to us? I went to church when I was young (still do). Sex, Drugs and Alcohol are the Holy Trinity for these teenagers, Apathy is their Messiah, Kanye West and Lady Gaga are their Prophets. They have no reverence for anything, not their parents, nor their elders, nor their teachers, nor their country. They are interested only in themselves, and their hedonistic pleasures. These teenagers have been presented everything on a silver platter, and so they have no work ethic, they devote themselves only to fun. Who's dating whom? Who's fornicating with whom on the side? Who has gotten pregnant? What party was the best this weekend? These are the things they concern themselves with. Previous generations fought economic depression, and great wars, and social revolutions. What does this have? They have parties, that is all.

To paraphrase Cromwell: Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst them? Is there one vice they do not possess?

These are the times when I think of simply ignoring the world and its troubles. For if these youth are our futures, then the future is bleak indeed.

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The Lord's Day (Feast of St Nicholas, Second Sunday in Advent)

Remembering our host and all those blighted by seasonal maladies and inconveniences (the writer of this post possessing a throat rather below par)...

HEAR us, Almighty and most merciful God and Saviour; extend thy accustomed goodness to this thy servant who is grieved with sickness: Sanctify, we beseech thee, this thy fatherly correction to him, that the sense of his weakness may add strength to his faith, and seriousness to his repentance: that, if it shall be thy good pleasure to restore him to his former health, he may lead the residue of his life in thy fear, and to thy glory: [...] through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen."

—from The Order for The Visitation of the Sick, the Book of Common Prayer (1662)

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