Madness, madness, war. Spin that globe and wonder. We live in murderous and turbulent times. The most awful century known to history is drawing to a close in much the same way as it dawned.
What must cause us all to wonder is that the same follies keep recurring, erupting and suppurating like some appalling illness of the earthly cellulite.
Look at any quarter of the globe. The accursed orb is alight with hatred and vengeance and greed. Yeah, sure, there are parts of the Indian Ocean which are in the clear. But that, it’s fair to say, is because there’s so few people there.
The same goes for the icy rim of Canada and Alaska, though even there the Eskimoes are endangered by disease, poverty and alcohol.
No, it’s a rotten deal that the human species has handed out all round. I don’t know when the day of obliteration will come, but I will find it hard to weep for the thinking monsters. And you should too.
Take the callousness that is described in the trial of two young boys for the murder of toddler Jamie Bulger in the UK. Of course, we must wait to see if the court agrees that the two on trial are the two who were seen misbehaving with the child on the fateful day. Whoever the pair were, they displayed dreadful monstrosity towards a defenceless child.
What makes this all the more chilling is the realisation that this repulsive hardness, this cruelty, this shellfishy heartlessness, is not especially unusual.
What’s gone wrong?
Look around you. Listen to the descriptions of the men accused of the Greysteel mass murder, snarling defiance back at the outraged burghers of Limavady. And the woman in the crowd who shouted encouragement to them, telling them what a good job they’d done, and what a pity it was that they hadn’t killed more.
Grieve at the thought that such blackness can exist. The same blackness that sends men to plant a bomb in a busy Shankill Road fishmongers, to gun down a crew of council workmen, to waste a busload of soldiers, to hack two undercover cops to death, to torture and brutally murder a quiet County Louth farmer, to slaughter a good samaritan pharmacist, an ice cream seller, a fish and chip man . . .
And on and on and on.
To plant a bomb at the Cenotaph in Enniskillen, knowing – knowing absolutely – that it would kill Protestants.
On Armistice Day.
Such an appalling irony. Because Armistice Day doesn’t celebrate war. It is fundamentally an expression of relief, relief that the madness of the First World War was finally at an end.
Seventy five years ago last week, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, the guns finally fell silent. As, of course, eventually they had to.
As they had to in the American Civil War before that. And in the Second World War and the Middle Eastern Wars and the Korean War, and the Vietnam War, and the Gulf War and all the others since.
Wars have to end. Somewhere, sometime, an equilibrium is reached. People just say, okay, that’s enough. Please.
An observer at the time commented on how there was no great demonstration among the troops when the news of the war’s end reached the troops.
“Everybody appeared too tired to take it in anything but a philosophic manner.” One understands their ennui.
Some found it hard not to keep on fighting. One platoon of the 2nd Middlesex found itself right in front of an occupied German post. Their officers encountered great difficulty in persuading them not to attack it.
As the Regimental historian put it: “Their earnest contention (was) that no one need know anything about it and that it seemed a pity not to kill a few more Germans while they had the chance.”
The British forces lost 908,371 lives, including many many thousands of Irish, from all parts of the country, from all religions and none. Some of those who survived came home and joined the RIC. Others joined the IRA. Others had nothing further to do with death and destruction as long as they lived.
It seems quite positively shameful that in the year of the 75th anniversary of the war that was supposed to end all wars, that the descendants of those who lived through (and in some cases fought in) that war, and of those who went on to fight another one on this island, haven’t learnt that their common humanity is of far greater consequence than their small ethnic differences.
That is not to say that we have not moved in 75 years. In ways we haven’t. But then, in ways we haven’t moved in 350 years.
No, the recent discovery of the peace dividend by the politicians of these islands has suddenly opened a half-door to let in a chink of light. It isn’t much, but it is a start.
One must also convey a profound appreciation of the changes that may be taking place in some hearts and minds on both sides of the ethnic divide, and especially among the nationalists. It is not easy to surrender a dream, however bloodstained.
I repeat that it’s only a glimmer of hope, but maybe, just maybe there is enough people on either side who recognise that the common threads are more important than the separate strands.
The war weary are beginning to see signs of the necessary understanding and commitment. Peace requires even greater bravery than war. It also begs great generosity on all sides. Is it too much to hope?