COLLECTING THOUGHTS

Back to contents

LINUS PAULING (1901 - 1994)

by Denise Wood 

This year marked the 10th.anniversary of the death of Professor Linus Pauling, but little notice has been taken of it.

 Linus Pauling was one of the greatest scientists of the 20th.century and a great champion in the cause of world peace, both roles receiving world-wide recognition with the award of the Nobel Prize for his work on the chemical bond and structure of molecules in 1954, and nine years later, the Nobel Prize for Peace. So far he is the only person to have received two Nobel Prizes without having to share with anyone else.

His principal interest was chemistry and much of his work was in the field of X-rays but he also developed the method of making models of molecules which helped Watson & Crick establish the shape of the DNA molecule.

 During the late 1940's he realised that the survival of the human race had been placed in jeopardy by the invention, use and continued development of nuclear weapons and joined Albert Einstein and J. Robert Oppenheimer in opposing the hydrogen bomb and the testing of further radio-active devices in the atmosphere. He travelled thousands of miles raising awareness of the potential danger of both testing and using nuclear weapons by lecturing and circulating petitions.

He received enormous support for his campaign from the Unitarian movement, particularly from the Los Angeles Unitarian Church, of which he and his wife were members. When he spoke against the testing of the then 'super bomb' at Bikini atoll, with its consequent high level of fall-out in 1954, more than a thousand people crammed into the church to hear him. Similar'crowds heard him denounce the U.S. government for their unjust treatment of J. Robert Oppenheimer. He developed close working relationships with several Unitarian peace activists, including the Los Angeles Minister, Stephen Fritchman. Eventually, as spokesman for the Peace Movement of Southern California, Professor Pauling was attracting as many as 3000 people to its outdoor rallies.

In 1958, he published a book "No More War" to oppose the views of Edward Teller, the advocate of the Hydrogen bomb; he even sued the Eisenhower government for endangering the lives of U.S. citizens from radio-active fallout without the permission of Congress! In that same year he persuaded 2,000 U.S. and 4,000 foreign scientists from 45 different countries to sign a petition demanding a cessation of nuclear testing. In 1961 he and his wife, organised an international conference in Oslo of 60 scientists from 15 different countries to address the issue of the proliferation of nuclear weapons and their subsequent report was sent to the governments of their respective countries.

When the Soviet Union detonated a 60 megaton bomb he warned that it would cause thousands of cases of cancer around the world and many physically and mentally impaired children would be born. He thought it unethical and immoral for nations to damage the human race in this way. He agitated for a nuclear test ban treaty and at length his hard work and his status as a world class scientist and humanitarian helped him to influence world leaders. He wrote to Khrushchev enclosing a ' draft of such a treaty and in 1963 - the following year - a partial test ban treaty similar to that proposed by Pauling was passed. He had also discussed his ideas with President Kennedy and made him aware of the dangers of testing in the atmosphere, and when the U.S.A. eventually signed the treaty, Kennedy quoted Linus Paulings' words.

While he came to believe that the nuclear deterrent probably had prevented a third world war, he continued for the rest of his life to campaign for a steady reduction in nuclear arsenals, since stock piles were sufficient to wipe out the entire human population several times over. In interviews towards the end of his life, he expressed optimism, that eventually nuclear weapons would be outlawed.

In the 1960's he was victimised by the U.S, State Department. His passport was withdrawn to prevent him travelling abroad to attend purely scientific conferences, as "it was not in the best interests of the United States" for him to do so. In justification, it was claimed that his "anti-communist statements were not strong enough". He was also threatened by the Internal Security Subcommittee of the Senate with a year in prison for contempt of the Senate, if he did not comply with their wishes. When he won the Nobel Peace Prize, "Life" magazine published an editorial under the headline, "A Weird Insult from Norway"! "Life" thought it was wrong of the Norwegians to give their prize to an individual who did not support official U.S. government policy.

His religious outlook was similar to his scientific. It was all a matter of experimenting. He dealt with everything as he perceived it. He said, " my basic philosophy is orientated to the diminution of suffering in the world.....a basic ethical principle with me is that decisions be made that will increase happiness". Asked why he was a Unitarian he answered, "...because the Unitarian Church accepts as members people who believe in trying to make the world a better place".

The courage, vision, and determination of Linus Pauling and his commitment to the continuing well-being of humanity, when so many political leaders were concerned only about military superiority, have helped our race to survive the most dangerous fifty years of its existence on this planet. Linus Pauling was a great man in every sense of the word, a great benefactor of mankind, yet ten years after his death, he is forgotten about by the media. What an ungrateful lot we are!

Back to contents

Back to contents

"STILLE NACHT, HEIL'GE NACHT"

by Bob Younie

Across the hellish domain of no-man's land, came the sound of singing. A clear, ringing tenor voice mingled with the rattle of machine. guns and the crackle of rifle fire. It  was not unusual for soldiers in opposing trenches, no more than 80 yards apart, to taunt each other by singing national anthems or crude home-made lyrics, impugning the enemy's prowess in any number of activities, but this was different. This was not a song of derision or challenge, but a lullaby, full of tenderness and love, innocence and peace. The sardonic whistles and cat-calls from the British trenches faded away as the soldiers listened more intently to this unfamiliar melody, enchanted by its soaring, caressing sweetness. A British soldier, Albert Moren, recalled later: ...."And then they sang 'Stille Nacht'. I shall never forget it, it was one of the high-lights of my life. I thought, what a beautiful tune" It was Christmas Eve 1914, on the Western Front, and something remarkable was about to happen.

After more than five months of hostilities, the conflict in Northern France and Belgium had reached stalemate. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers, well dug in, faced each other across a narrow strip of no-man's land, and were dutifully killing each other, as ordered. The Autumn weather had been atrocious. It had rained almost continuously for weeks; 'the insistent shelling and the passage of thousands of heavily armed men had churned the battle front into a morass of clinging mud and stagnant pools. A week or so before Christmas, a subaltern with the Gordon Highlanders wrote: I used to think I knew what mud was before I came here but I was quite mistaken. The mud varies from 6 inches to 3, 4 and even 5 feet, and it is so sticky, that until we were all issued with boots, my men used to arrive in the trenches with bare feet. These, I swamp-like conditions were common  to both sides, soldiers eating,; sleeping and fighting for days in , water-logged trenches, which constantly needed to be baled out, and repaired, and so there developed between opposing soldiers, even as they tried to do each other harm, a kind of mutual understanding of their plight. They were thinking, feeling, honourable people (for the most part), with hopes and fears, whose lives had been disrupted and endangered by this madness which, required them to kill each other. Christmas time with its message of Peace and Goodwill and thoughts of, home and loved ones and memories of family festivities in happier times, was particularly difficult and confusing. Somehow to continue killing fellow sufferers during this important Christian festival simply did not seem right to many a soldier on both sides, nor did they wish to! be excluded from the celebrations which they assumed the rest of the world would be enjoying.

On Christmas Eve, the sky cleared, the temperature suddenly dropped, and the whole battlefield was white with frost. The ghastly quagmire of no-man's land with its sullen pools, its barbed wire entanglements, its abandoned equipment and pitiable, unburied corpses, was frozen hard, and lit by a full moon, possessed a cold, remote beauty that was both repulsive and moving.

Suddenly, tiny spurts of flame began to appear along the German parapet, first in one place, then another, until eventually, the whole length of their front was lined by, flickering points of light. The German soldiers were erecting Christmas trees where the British soldiers could see them.

A British rifleman on sentry duty wrote in his diary: Then suddenly lights began to appear along the German parapet, which was evidently make-shift Christmas trees, adorned with lighted candles, which burned steadily in the still, frosty air. Then our opponents began to sing 'Stille Nacht'. This was actually the first time I heard this carol. 

Thinking it churlish to ignore this friendly overture, the British replied with The First Nowell and the Germans responded with 0 Tannenbaum. And so it went on, each opposing trench taking it in turn to contribute a carol to the concert, until the British launched into 0 Come All Ye Faithful and the Germans joined in with Adeste Fideles.

 The rifleman ended his diary account: And I thought, well, this was really a most extraordinary thing - two nations both singing the same carol in the middle of a war.

His commanding officer, meanwhile, was writing home: Just a line from the trenches on Xmas Eve - a topping night with not much firing going on & both sides singing. It will be interesting to see what happens tomorrow. My orders to the Coy. are not to start firing unless the Germans do. 

While such scenes were being repeated many times along the length of the British lines, more daring experiments in bridge building were also being conducted. Troops from both sides, invited each other to meet unarmed in the middle of no-man's land. A Corporal of the Seaforths recorded this incident: Fritz clambered out of his trench and accompanied by three others of my section, we went out to meet him. We were walking between the trenches. At any other time this would have been suicide, even to show your head above the parapet would have been fatal, but tonight we go unarmed out to meet our enemies. We shook hands, wished each other a merry Xmas and were conversing as if  we had known each other for years. We were in front of their wire entanglements and surrounded by Germans. Soon most of our Company followed us. What a sight - little groups of Germans and British extending almost the length of our front. Out of the darkness we could hear laughter and see lighted matches, a German lighting a Scotchman's cigarette and vice versa, exchanging cigarettes and souvenirs. Here we were laughing and chatting to men whom only afew hours before we had been trying to kill.

After some early mist, Christmas Day developed into a perfect winter's day with a white frost, clear blue sky and bright sunshine. Both sides at first seemed subdued and there was an obvious reluctance along many sectors of the front to start firing. One soldier remarked in his diary, It was so quiet it was uncanny. There were no planes overhead, no observation balloons, no bombs, no rifle fire, therefore no snipers, just an occasional lark overhead.

Messages chalked on boards began to appear on parapets proclaiming, Merry Xmas and We no shoot, you no shoot. Greetings were shouted across no-man's land and gradually, soldiers began warily to emerge from their trenches on to no-man's land. The initiative, on most occasions was taken by the Germans, sometimes by a private soldier, sometimes by an NCO and eventually by the officers who negotiated a truce for their own section of the line. Soon hundreds of men were milling about in no-man's land, chatting, taking snapshots, laughing, exchanging gifts of bully beef, Maconochie's stew and Tickler's jam, beer, wine and rum, cigars and cigarettes and swapping cap badges and buttons as souvenirs. The Kaiser had sent every German soldier a gift of cigars and not a few of them were smoked by the British! There seemed to be many German soldiers who had lived and worked in Britain, mostly in the hotel trade, and they spoke good English and so could interpret for their comrades. In addition to exchanging photographs and talking about family and friends at home and discussing the propaganda peddled by the press of both sides, a favourite topic was football, and various attempts were made to arrange international matches in no-man's land on Boxing Day or even on New Year's Day. The High Command of both sides, however, firmly stamped on "any such piece of folly". Several ad hoc games did develop on Christmas Day with improvised footballs and several dozen aside and at least one properly organised match, as one German officer described in a letter home; Suddenly, a Tommy came with a football, kicking already and making fun, and then began a football match. We marked the goals with our caps. Teams were quickly established for a match on the frozen mud and the Fritzes beat the Tommies 3 - 1. 

Their first duty, however, on Christmas Day, was to recover the bodies of dead comrades, many of whom had been killed weeks ago, and to bury them. That morning, therefore, funeral services were being conducted every few hundred yards along the line.

A joint British-German funeral service was conducted by a Chaplin of the Gordon Highlanders, a Church of Scotland minister from Aberdeen. One of the officers present described it in a letter home: We had a most wonderful joint burial service. Our Padre, arranged the prayers and psalms etc. and an interpreter wrote them out in German. They were read first in English by our Padre and then in German by a boy who was studying for the ministry. It was an extraordinary and most wonderful sight. The Germans formed up on one side and the British on the other, the officers standing in front, every head bared. Yes, I think it was a sight that one will never see again.

 Not every sector of the Western Front participated in the Christmas Truce. The Belgians and French armies, responsible for more than 400 miles of front, understandably embittered because the Germans were occupying part of their homeland, continued to bombard the enemy; and the British facing Prussian regiments never dropped their guard, because the Prussians were not considered to be trustworthy. The Truce was largely confined to the part of the line where British and Indian troops opposed Saxon regiments.

The commanding generals were kept in ignorance of the whole thing as General Smith-Dorien had issued on 3rd December (repeated on Christmas Day) a stern warning to his troops to maintain the offensive spirit undiminished and to avoid any lapse into "military lethargy". His rage was apparently volcanic when he heard on the evening of Boxing Day that his troops had spent Christmas partying with the enemy. Warning that disciplinary action might follow, he concluded his memo to his officers with, To finish this war quickly, we must keep up the fighting spirit and do all we can to discourage friendly intercourse.

In his autobiography, The General Officer Commanding, Sir John French, wrote, When this was reported to me, 1 issued immediate orders to prevent any recurrence of such conduct and called ,the local commanders to strict account which resulted in a good deal of trouble. Motivating their troops sufficiently to kill the enemy was clearly a major concern of the General Staff: Major General J.A.L. Haldane, as early as September 1914 had laid down his policy that ....no opportunity should be lost for inflicting casualties on our opponents and not yielding to the temptation to adopt a pacific attitude towards them. He was apprehensive at Christmastime lest his English troops failed to exhibit a proper attitude. He reported with some sense of relief, . however, On my front, no fraternisation . took place.

The participating soldiers were conscious that they were caught up in a most unusual event, as if possessed by a mood that would not be gainsaid. Their emotions were mixed as they tried to come to terms with themselves. There was bitterness against the Germans in that they had invaded Belgium and France and that on the 16th December, German battle cruisers had bombarded Scarborough, Whitby and the Hartlepools, killing 122 and injuring 443 civilians and that on Christmas Eve a German plane had bombed Dover; there was also the fear they were being disloyal to king and country and particularly to their comrades who had perished; at the same time they felt no animosity towards the men they were obliged to kill. They were struck by the incongruity of the situation. One : Rifleman wrote home: I was talking and shaking hands with the very men I had been trying to kill a few hours before.

A private of the Gordons wrote: You, can hardly credit this but it is true. Fancy shooting at the Germans  and going over to wish them a Merry Christmas. I don't think it has happened in the world's history before. You would have thought that peace had been declared. Another soldier wrote: It is really very extraordinary that this sort of thing should happen in a war in which there is so much bitternes and ill feeling. Another said: We tried to explain to them that we bore them no malice. A German soldier writing many years later: There was laughter and joy as if there had never been any hostility between these thousands of young men. What they all had in common with each other seemed to be much more important than what apparently divided them, and there was general agreement among them that the politicians and the high command were responsible for the mayhem they were compelled to inflict upon each other.

Of course it could not last, the high command would see to that and in spite of attempts on both sides to prolong the armistice, it started to decay during Boxing Day and by the day after it was "the killing business as usual".

Thus ended a remarkable episode in which the human spirit and the rational mind overcame the folly of war for a short time. A British soldier described a meeting with a German captain who clasped his hands together and looked toward  heaven and said, 'My God, why cannot we have peace and let us all go home.'

Back to contents

FOLK TALE

The Grandfather of a friend found himself wandering around no-man's land in thick fog on his 19th birthday, in February 1918. Eventually, much relieved, he found his trench. A lone figure stood on guard, but he was wearing a German uniform. He had stumbled into the enemy lines. He said, "The German looked at me and I looked at him, and he didn't want to shoot me and I didn't want to shoot him, so we turned our backs on each other and pretended we hadn't seen each other after all." He made it back to the British side safely, but elated.

Back to contents

D'HOMESTIC VALUES

GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MARGE

by Essie Wise 

"The next value I speak of, must be forever cast in stone. I speak of decency, the moral courage to say what is right and condemn what is wrong, and we need a nation that is closer to The Waltons than The Simpsons." President George H. W. Bush (Snr.) during a campaign speech in his unsuccessful drive for re-election in January 1992. The issue of Family Values, so called, featured prominently in his election campaign, as indeed it did recently in that of his son, discovering the road-map to Utopia in the agenda of the Christian hard right, the bridge between how-things-are and how things-ought-to-be. Ironically, and overlooked by President Bush who was himself to become a character in the show, having inadvertently moved from the White House to Springfield, the whole purpose of The Simpsons is to define this gap, identify its causes and suggest how eventually it may eliminated. To do this, the writers have to establish what family values are and how they relate to current~ popular culture, and each episode of The Simpsons shows Homer, Marge, Bart, and Lisa struggling valiantly to perform this task and in the process addressing, political, moral, social, religious and economic issues.

In essence, The Simpsons is a satirical Situation Comedy, in cartoon form, and unashamedly based on many such ""family" shows, such as The Cosby Show, The Beverley Hillbillies, The Waltons, and Father Knows Best which incidentally, but not coincidentally, is also set in a town called Springfield. These shows record the activities of decent, upright, God-fearing citizens, who never do wrong and whose problems are always clean, healthy problems, and who never challenge society's illusions about itself. The Simpsons, by contrast, instead of delivering a regular. dose of anodyne to the nation, shows American popular culture as it is, and it is anything but reassuring.

The tone is set by Homer and the town of Springfield, both are superficial, tasteless and vulgar, dedicated to unrestrained consumption, opportunism and gross consumerism.

Homer is seriously over-weight, bald and lazy, His favourite pastime when not drinking 'Duff Beer' in Moe's pub, is lying supine on the sofa in front of the TV set. He is unintelligent, badly educated, self-absorbed and self-important, comfortable, spoiled and wants for nothing. The world is organised to suit him and to supply his appetites; society is geared to catch his attention. He is the product of a dumbed-down, transitory. unchallenging, supersized, prepackaged culture, and he reckons that the supreme achievements of human endeavour are TV iced donuts and Duff Beer. He is irresponsible, careless, inconsistent and shameless, acts impulsively, is prone to sudden rages and constantly finds himself in a self-made muddle, which he confronts by petulantly slapping his forehead and emitting "D'ho!" while trusting in luck (and wife, Marge) to rescue him. He is most inappropriately employed as a safety officer in a nuclear power plant! While Homer is deeply flawed, he is capable of love and tenderness towards his family and sometimes shows some awareness of his short-comings. In one episode he has the opportunity to be intelligent but he finds he worries too much about the problems of humanity in an unjust world, and gratefully reverts to being stupid again. He is successful and happy because he is stupid; intelligent people, on the other hand, are frustrated and alienated by contemporary life. 

This, of course is a satirical show and Homer, the well-meaning, blundering slob, is its unflattering symbol of contemporary American society as it is, not as it would like to be, as portrayed in the squeaky clean The Waltons.

Bart, Homer's 10 year old son, is a product of TV advertising, and the pop-music industry, specifically of "Punk", and he is the epitome of "cool". His life-style guru is the TV set which gives him most of his values, his vocabulary and his understanding of the world. He embraces current popular culture enthusiastically, is devoted to certain pop groups while hating others, adores celebrities, collects comics of dubious taste, eats vast quantities of junk food, including masses of sugar, wears 'cool' clothes, knows dozens of TV jingles off by heart and wallows happily in this morass of trivia. He has a battery of stock reactions to his environment which includes derision, suspicion, cynicism, and distrust. As a result he obeys no authority but his own, because, in his experience, no other authority is to be trusted. Having rejected all forms of conventional success, he is classified by psychologists (at the age of five!) as an under-achiever, a tag he is proud of. In school he is disruptive and lazy, but elsewhere he is energetic, imaginative, motivated, and ingenious, qualities which, ironically, frequently land him in trouble. 8art, however, in spite of his spiked Hair, goggle eyes, disillusionment, and detached attitude, is more than just another 'punk'. He is a very complex creation in which idealism seems to exist side by side with negativity. While revelling in the cornucopia of contemporary culture, he is also rejecting its tawdriness, its superficiality, its consumerism and hypocrisy. He retains a morally sound core, he never commits criminal acts and in moments of enlightenment realises that in denying everything he becomes numb to everything, that in being 'cool' he is opting out of life altogether. At heart he is a decent human being, capable of feeling concern for other people. He helps his favourite TV personality, the unscrupulous Krusty) the Clown, to become reconciled with his father and even saves him from an unjust jail sentence. Bart possesses many of the qualities ex-President Bush admires in the Waltons, but they have been adulterated by the shoddy, materialist values promoted by that same rampant commercialism that put the Bush family in the White House.

While Homer and Bart are the hostages of the consumerist society, Lisa and Marge are the heroines riding to their rescue.

Lisa is Homer's 8 years old daughter, and represents the enlightened, tolerant and rational values of liberal thinkers, among whom are probably included the writers of the show. Lisa is the genius of the family. In addition to being very well informed and capable of coherent thought and speech, she is the family's source of common sense and sound judgment. Lisa is the social conscience of The Simpsons. Unlike Homer, she has ethical principles, has a political stance, a world view and is critical of exploitive, anti-social, multi-national corporations which are concerned only for profit, and has a dislike for the banalities of popular culture. Lisa searches for something lasting but in hers9ciety everything is temporary; morals, promises, relationships don't last and nothing can be relied upon.

 She understands the process of political manipulation. While rightwing politicians rant about the deterioration of family values in the home, major commercial organisations, behind respectable facades, trample over people's human rights, pursue unethical and sometime fraudulent policies in the name of their shareholders. She is at odds with Mr Burns, Springfield's own tycoon, owner of the local Nuclear Power Station who feels justified in polluting the environment to provide employment for the town and profit for himself. Lisa battles against injustice, corruption, prejudice, complacency, bigotry in a brave attempt to draw people's attention to what is wrong with the world, but nobody cares very much, they would all rather sit at home and watch The Waltons like that nice Bush family next door.

At the heart of the Simpson family, holding it together, pacifying, consoling, nurturing and loving, is Marge, the home-maker, wife and mother, and the (usually) calm spiritual centre of the Simpson family hurricane. The other Simpsons depend upon Marge to advise and chastise, reconcile them to themselves and each other, and to bless them with forgiveness and grant them absolution and so end each episode no matter how turbulent it has been, in wholesome tranquillity. Marge is, in a sense, The Simpson Church and its clergy. The Simpsons, in fact, attend Church regularly, Marge compels them to, but not out of any genuine religious conviction but because it is expected of every respectable Springfield citizen so to do. Thus Homer, Marge and the kids sit with the sleazy Mayor, the corrupt Police Chief, the shyster lawyer and of course, Mr Burns, whose malign influence hangs over Springfield like a poison cloud and listen to the Revd. Lovejoy, who admitted to Marge, "I stopped caring years ago, but nobody noticed". Occupying the pew in front, is Homer's bete noir, his neighbour, Ned Flanders, the right wing fundamentalist, who found God and lost his humanity in the pages of 'Leviticus'.

Marge's Christianity consists of facing facts, avoiding self-deception, doing good deeds, respecting other people and dealing with them honestly and truthfully. Homer's definition of Christianity by contrast, is "The one with all the well-meaning rules that don't work out in real life." and therefore better ignored.

Marge's faith resides in the sanctity of the Family which is the source of her values - mutual love, respect, support, loyalty and give and take. She looks at the disparate crew that are her loved ones, the self-absorbed Homer, the nihilistic Bart, the idealistic, reforming Lisa, and knows instinctively that they need a permanent and trustworthy centre, and that is what she provides.

The authors of The Simpsons have a bleak view of modern, urban life. People are searching for something worthwhile and permanent to believe in but they are lost in a materialist wilderness where greed and selfishness are the principal survival skills, vainly seeking a path from how-things-are to how-things-ought- to-be. Their salvation will not be found in swallowing ever larger doses of The Waltons and there like, but in following Marge's lead in recognising the real world for what it is and like Lisa, doing something about it.

Back to contents

Back to content

A PEACE WHICH PASSETH ALL UNDERSTANDING

by Rev. Eric W Breeze

How do we find inner peace? This is not an easy question to answer - especially if we think that it is something to be found outside ourselves. Peace is not something that we run after - it's not something that we look for. It's a heart and mind at rest with itself and at rest with the world. It is a state of inner quietness and tranquility. And this can only be achieved if we take time to become inwardly at peace with ourselves.

There are two aspects to this - an outward personal peace, and an inner silence of heart and mind. And we can only achieve this outward peace if first our inner nature is at rest, where all the emotions of the heart side of our nature has become quieted and uplifted, and we achieve what is called 'single heartedness'. The other side to this is when all the activities of the mind become directed and one pointed to achieve more of a 'unity of thought'. And this we only achieve when we take time to be quiet. James Allen expressed it well in his book of Meditations: "Train your mind in strong, impartial, and gentle thought; train your heart in purity and compassion; train your tongue to silence and to true and stainless speech; so shall you enter the way of holiness and peace, and shall ultimately realise the immortal Love."

Peace then is not something that we can suddenly decide we are going to have. Yes, we must make a decision that this is what we want, but we won't find it outside ourselves - and we certainly won't find it by running about chasing our own tails in a chaotic world. We have to retire within. Therefore, what we are talking about here is the practice of inner silence and meditation. This is the only way we will achieve personal peace in our own personal world. Pope Paul VI said that "Peace demands a mentality and a spirit which, before turning to others, must first permeate him who wishes to bring peace. Peace is first and foremost personal, before it is social."

The peace therefore we wish to achieve for ourselves is not the peace of the world. It is a peace that the world cannot give or even take away. It is a depth of silence, which touches our hearts and minds. This is the peace that passeth all understanding

Jacob Boehme expressed it this way: "When both thy intellect and will are quiet and passive to the impressions of the Eternal Word and Spirit; and when thy Soul is winged up and above that which is temporal, the outward senses and the imaginations being locked up by ho ly abstraction, then the eternal hearing, seeing and speaking will be revealed to thee."

Yes, we would all like to see peace in the world, but let us never forget the inner peace of our own hearts and minds.

I conclude with words from the Chinese Master Tao Tse: "If there is to be peace in the world, there must be peace in the nations. If there is to be peace in the nations, there must be peace in the cities. If there is to be peace in the cities, there must be peace between neighbours. If there is to be peace between neighbours, there must be peace in the home. If there is to be peace in the home, there must be peace in the heart." 

Back to contents

CHRISTMAS 1945

by Bill Stephen 

That first, post-war Christmas was a strange hybrid occasion. Fighting had ended, certainly, but the wounds it had inflicted were still raw. We were eager now to embrace the future, but the past had a much stronger grip upon our minds. The exhilaration of the victory celebrations was long since spent leaving in its place the gnawing pain of loss, emptiness and un-reflected love that follows bereavement. Just about everyone in our community had lost some-one close to them, and this created a climate of compassion and tact that protected each of us from unwanted intrusion when grief became unbearable. Few families had suffered more than my friend, Davie Gatt's. His father, a ship's engineer had perished in the Atlantic in January 1943. His uncle (his mother's brother) had died in Libya. His grandmother had been bombed out of her home and was now dependent upon his mother, grief and terror having befuddled her mind. His oldest brother, Georgie, an air-gunner, on his first trip, had baled out over Eastern Germany a few months before the war ended, had fallen into enemy hands, but since then nothing more had been heard of him. And so day by day, Maggie Gatt endured that uncertainty, that tug of war between hope and despair that is the curse of that single word, "Missing".

During the first heady days of peace, it had been agreed that the bairns of the Seatown should be treated to a monster Christmas party in the Fishermen's Hall, to compensate for years of shortages and grim, blacked-out Yuletides and to celebrate the return to peace and plenty. The optimism of those early days, however, was premature: the streets remained unlit at night; the shop shelves were bare; jagged chunks of masonry still protruded from the muddy puddles on the bomb-sites; the energy and the means to create a great feast were now in short supply. However, a party had been ordered and a party there would be!

Maggie Gatt was the caretaker of the Fishermen's hall and it was her duty to have it cleaned, furnished and decorated for the event.

On the first day of the Christmas Holidays" Maggie, Davie and I stood in the cavernous emptiness of the Fishermen's Hall, shivering in the grey, morning light, beside us a fifteen foot long fir tree, dripping from the forest, oozing resin from its severed stump, a large wooden tub, with a crust of dried herring scales, around the rim, a tall step ladder, and wonder of wonders, two tea-chests filled with paper chains, garlands, bells, sheaves of tinsel and a whole treasury of gold and silver ornaments for the Christmas tree. Whooppee,! Our excitement and delight, loud and shrill, set the echoes ringing around the roof beams. We were told this festive gear had last embellished the ballroom of a transatlantic liner, in 1938. By what chance they had fallen into our hands, I never discovered, but they had a potency, a magic, that would conjure up that lost world of carefree luxury which we yearned to experience. We tugged them open, those great paper chains, as fat as bolsters, orange, lemon, lime-green, rasp-berry red, ripe plum purple, running the length of the hall with their candy-twist colours streaming out behind us. The draught from the front door sent them squirming about the floor like the jolly serpents on a snakes and ladders board and we laughed and shouted as we skipped around them.

Maggie stood by the fallen tree, facing the open door and the empty sky, waiting, waiting, her thoughts, 'thousands of miles away, searching in some endless forest for a lost figure in RAF. uniform. She felt herself to be the victim of a malign silence, a kind of universal deafness which only news of her missing son could penetrate. Blighted by anxiety and enervated by despair, she had no heart for decorating and party making. She looked around hopelessly. A sense of panic gripped her: how could she make this shabby, old place fit for a children's party? Joy, gladness, good will? How could innocence and happiness survive in this bleak, cruel world? Her cousin, Charlie Taylor, arrived to help. After five years in an enemy POW camp, and several months in a sanatorium recovering from TB Charlie was woefully thin, pale and still very weak, but he was determined to put the past behind him and get on with life.

Precisely measuring every loop, he set about pinning the garlands to the walls, perilously balancing on the top rung of the step ladder, while we fetched and carried. He had completed one wall and was about to start on the other when he suddenly collapsed at the foot of the ladder. Maggie ran to him, knelt beside him and cradled his head on her lap. His face was grey, his body limp on the floor entangled in the paper streamer he had been carrying. Maggie seemed turned to marble, rigid, speechless, staring in front of her and scarcely breathing but gripping Charlie tightly as if to keep the life-force from leaking out of him. Thus we remained, spellbound, until Davie, ran the length of the hall calling, "Mither, Mither," and shook her by the shoulder, bursting into tears. Charlie moaned, a little colour returned to his face, his eyes opened and he tried to sit up. Released at last from the deadly horror that had gripped her, Maggie sent me to the shop to get help and propped Charlie against the ladder. Eventually other people arrived. Charlie was taken home and put to bed. Depressed beyond measure by the sight of the hall, one side gaily garlanded, the other a blank, like an interrupted life, Maggie pushed us outside and locked the door behind her.

The decoration and all the other preparations were completed by the ARP Wardens and by the day of the party, the hall had been transformed. There was a blazing fire in the hearth, the gas chandeliers were glowing brightly, the paper chains criss-crossed the ceiling, and the Christmas tree decked in tinsel and baubles, rose majestically from its tub, now glistening with red and gold paint. Tables of jellies and cakes and sandwiches were set along the walls, and a fiddler, a drummer and a pianist performed prestissimo! We played games, danced, laughed, shouted, ran about, fell on the floor, threw off jerseys and cardigans and perspired freely.

After the meal came the climax of the afternoon, the arrival of Santa Claus. The very last slice of sponge-cake had scarcely left the cake stand when three loud knocks cut through the din.... Panic! Santa Claus was arriving before his time. The band stuck up "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow", we all started to cheer, the door was flung open and standing in the porch, bathed in pale, yellow gaslight, was a smiling young man, immaculately dressed in an RAF great coat and forage cap. Behind him in the shadows was the bulky figure of Santa -Tom Hemp, the coast-guard. Silence gripped us. Surprise immobilised us. We were transfixed by the jaunty figure in the doorway. Then Davie erupted. Spraying scone all over my sponge-cake, he bellowed, "Georgie! Mither, it's Georgie!" galloped down the hall and launched himself at the figure in blue. The band burst into life with the RAF march and the whole company found its voice and cheered as Georgie, Davie and Santa processed up the hall to Santa's throne. Maggie, still with a drying cloth in her hands, having been dragged from the kitchen sink and thrust in front of Georgie, promptly fainted at his feet. While she was helped to a chair, the band played "Charlie is my Darling". Some of the younger kids leapt about in time to the music, while Santa and everyone else crowded around Maggie and Georgie. Davie, bright red in the face, pranced up and down, flapping his arms and shouting incoherently until he wet himself.

Standing under the porch gaslight all this time was a third figure we had all overlooked in the excitement, an old woman, in a grey shawl, clutching an unopened telegram in her hand. Once order had been restored and we were all back at our places at the tables, Georgie led her to Maggie, her daughter. Maggie took the envelope from her, opened it and read, "Coming home Christmas Eve. Well. Georgie." It was dated five days previously. This and two other telegrams sent over the past four weeks about Georgie's safe return to Britain had been taken in by old Elsie who had placed them unopened in her "Pilgrim's Progress" for safe keeping or perhaps to shield her daughter from more bad news. In her confused state of mind telegrams meant only one thing, more pain and heartbreak.

Overcome by relief and happiness, Maggie sat clutching Georgie's hand, occasionally wiping her eyes with her drying cloth and sipping hot sweet tea. For a while, Davie ran wildly around the hall, swooping and soaring, pretending to be a spitfire noisily rat-tat-tat-ting enemy aircraft into extinction, and then sat at Georgie's feet and didn't even get up when Santa called his name.

The party went on into the night, much later than had been intended; and people started coming in off the street just to see Georgie for themselves and having reassured themselves that Maggie's first-born was indeed there, alive and well, they went off to tell their friends. And so that Christmas Eve, the Fisherman's Hall became the centre of our glad, little universe and for one family at least, peace had been restored to their hearts at last.

Georgie became famous overnight. Having escaped from a POW camp he walked towards the allied forces and was eventually rounded up by Americans, who deciding he was a Ukrainian, sent him to a camp in Italy, where he remained for several weeks until he persuaded a Red Cross official he was a British Airman.

Back to contents

COLLECTING THOUGHTS

Back to contents

Return to the Archives