Remembrance Sunday

13 Sunday Nov 2016

Tags

British Empire, history, Remembrance Day, United Kingdom

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place: and in the sky
The larks still bravely singing fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead: Short days ago,
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved: and now we lie
In Flanders fields!

Take up our quarrel with the foe
To you, from failing hands, we throw
The torch: be yours to hold it high
If ye break faith with us who die,
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields

Most, if not all of you know that I am a Yank. Actually, I’m a rather patriotic, conservative one with a bent for military history. In the States this weekend we are observing Veterans Day, it is the day we thank our living veterans and serving service people. Your Remembrance Day is analogous to our Memorial Day which is 30 May. The short form is that it comes from Decoration Day, which in our history was the day on which the veterans of The Grand Army of the Republic decorated the graves of the veterans of our Civil War, it now honors all of our war dead. So for us, Veterans Day honors the living, although if we’re completely honest, both days honor both in the public’s mind.

But, we here in the Great Republic are aware that in the last hundred years we have never fought alone, we have, in all our wars (yes, even Vietnam, Thank You Australia) fought beside at least one other member or former member of the British Empire. In most, we have fought together with all of you. And we have been very proud to do so.

I also remember that during the Falklands, that while our government did not feel able to overtly help, for mostly political reasons, the American people, from the President on down, were cheering for you. You guys weren’t the only ones who watched the fleet sail with a tear in your eyes. And if it had been necessary, one of our light carriers, the Iwo Jima, which happened to be in refit, was being readied to be transferred to the Royal Navy. It was your war, as Vietnam was ours, but we know who our friends are.

An aside to our American readers, 10 November marked, with Pomp and Circumstance (and dancing, and a fair amount of alcohol) an event that occurred 241 years ago in Dun’s tavern in Philadelphia: the birth of those guys that Kaiser Bill called Teufel Hunden, the US Marine Corps. Ever since it has lived up to its motto of Semper Fidelis.

Most of us here have written something about Remembrance Day: Chalcedon here, Jessica here, and I did here, I’m pretty sure Geoffrey has talked about it a bit as well, but I’m darned if I can find it. I think in many ways, we said most of what there is to say.

One lesson we learned from Vietnam, is to honor in all ways and at all times our veterans, and from what I read, it may be a lesson that you have in some measure forgotten, whatever the politics of the war, it was not the fault of the soldiers, no soldier has ever wanted a war. In fact, since we don’t think our government does a good enough job of taking care of ours, we have many volunteer organizations that help them as well. Always remember them, they gave their lives willingly for your freedom.

As Americans we are proud that we were able to help defend you, during the Cold War, as the saying went, the Eastern border of the United States was the Elbe River. We meant it and the Soviets knew we meant it, and so we won. It was long, it was very costly, it was boring, it was terrifying, it was many things, it was also our privilege and our duty. But for you in Britain, it was also the repayment of a debt we owed you. We remember that during the nineteenth century, while we were busy building America (with not a few British ideas, and a lot of British capital, as well) we had proclaimed that new European colonies would not be permitted in the New World. We knew perfectly well that we were completely unable to enforce that, we also knew that Britain, for its own reasons (mostly trade) would.

We are also aware that Britain, and especially the Royal Navy was the major force that ended chattel slavery in western civilization. Sometimes we think you forget how good you have been for the world. Eventually, more than 600,000 Americans would die to end slavery here, and it was worth it, as were your efforts. And that doesn’t even touch upon the longest period of (mostly) peace between major powers, which has come to be called justifiably The Pax Brittanica. Your history in the modern world is something to be very proud of, and we, the rowdy colonials who fought a war against you to preserve our rights as Englishmen, salute you.

You are commemorating the centennial of the Great War as are we. We and the Canadians have celebrated the bicentennial of the War of 1812. It was sort of a silly war, and essentially ended status quo ante but it has echoed down 200 years of North American history because it was the making of two nations, Canada, and the United States. It is quite often referred to here as the Second War of Independence because it unified us, as it did the Canadians. The other thing it did was allow us to train up a military which would grow to become world class. We knew we were on the way when in 1814, our soldiers were able to stand toe to toe with the best in the world: The British regulars. Of course, you went on and burned Washington (Many of us wouldn’t mind much if you did it again). Nor was that the last time British troops paraded in Washington under arms. That was fifty-three years ago this month when a detachment of the Black Watch was included in President Kennedy’s funeral procession to Arlington.

But what I really wanted to talk about today are two men, both veterans of the Great War, who both won the American Medal of Honor and one the Victoria Cross as well. Both were posthumous. In fact, they were both awarded in the fall of 1921. One was a soldier of the empire, and one was an American doughboy. This is the story of the British recipient.

FROM THE LONDON TIMES of OCT. 18, 1921

Yesterday morning General Pershing laid the Congressional Medal of Honour on the grave of the Unknown British Warrior in Westminster Abbey. The simple and beautiful ceremony seemed full of the promise of new and happier times. And what we call Nature appeared to have laid her approval on the hopes that it aroused.

But I have written about this before, and you can read it here. Today let us have a different perspective from the day.

A WOMAN’S TRIBUTE

The Message of the Double Line of Khaki; From the London Times, October 18, 1921

In Westminster Abbey, yesterday, General Pershing laid the American Medal of Honour upon the grave of the Unknown Soldier of Britain. The bright sunlight streamed through the high stained-glass windows in long shafts of light that fell warm upon the grey stone of the Gothic arches, upon the quiet people in the Nave, and around the flower-strewn tomb, and that lay in a cloth of scarlet on the flag above the body of the Unknown Dead.

A thousand years of great history stood silent within those old walls. Close by are the tombs of Norman, Plantagenet, Tudor, and Stuart Kings and Queens, of the priests, and soldiers and the sailors, of the poets and statesmen that have made England great.

As the organ filled the sunlit spaces of the ancient church with its deep volume of sound, there marched up the aisle, with bared heads, a detachment of British soldiers from the Guard’s regiments. As they formed a line facing the centre, an equal number of American soldiers, bare-headed, marched up the other side, and turning, stood facing the British soldiers across the narrow aisle.

Both lines of khaki, both lines of straight and young and clear-eyed boys, both lines of men of Anglo-Saxon blood, of the same standards and of the same ideals they stood there in the sunlight in that shrine of a thousand years of memory, looking straight into each other’s eyes.

Between them, up the aisle, marched the choir in their scarlet vestments with their bright cross on high, the generals, the admirals, and the Ministers of the Empire, and the Ambassador and the Commanding General of the Great Republic but in all that they represented, and in all that was said in the ceremonies that followed, there was no such potent symbol as those two lines of khaki- clad boys, with the sun shining on their bared heads, their brave young faces, and their strong young bodies, looking each other straight in the face.Between them lay, not the narrow aisle, but a thousand leagues of sea, the building of a new world, the birth of a new destiny for man. But as they stood there where they could have touched hands in the old Abbey which was a shrine for their common ancestors, they were so amazingly alike in bearing and appearance that they ceased to be a detachment of soldiers from two different countries, and they became a symbol of the illimitable potentiality of a common heritage that heritage of which the ancient Abbey was a shrine the heritage of the ideals of freedom, of order, of self-discipline, of self-respect.

If any words spoken in the Abbey could have conveyed a hundredth part of what that double line of clear- eyed boys said in utter silence the world would have been a happier place to-day. The old strength and the new force of a common heritage stood in khaki in the aisle of Westminster Abbey bare-headed, to honour the symbol of supreme sacrifice to those ideals in the Cross of Christ and in the body of an Unknown Soldier.

The service included this.

It has been a very long century since that last quiet August weekend of the Edwardian Age. It has been filled far too often with the roar of the guns, and the rattle of musketry followed by the sounding of the Last Post. But the mission has been maintained, it will never be won, although we can and should pray that it will be less horrific going forward. But all around the world, freedom-loving people have learned of the steadfast valor even unto death of English-speaking soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen. We are proud of our part, yes. But we are equally proud to be your allies and friends.

Has it been worth it? The citizen of Ypres, Belgium seem to think so. Every night at 8:00pm since 2 July 1928, except during the German occupation in World War II, they have executed this ceremony, and when the Polish forces liberated them in 1944, they resumed, while heavy fighting was still going on in the city. While under occupation in World War II the ceremony took place at Brookwood Military Cemetery, in Surrey, England.

Every night

For The Fallen
With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.

Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres,
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted;
They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England’s foam.

But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.

Laurence Binyon

Conversionary Protestantism and Democracy: Overview

09 Wednesday Sep 2015

Posted by Neo in Church/State, Consequences

≈ 16 Comments

Tags

British Empire, Catholic Church, El Salvador, Evangelicalism, God, Jews, Orthodox Judaism, Protestantism, UK, United States

This is based on a paper by Robert D. Woodberry of the National University of Singapore. It is available here. What I say here will seem quite abrupt to some. That is a function of reducing about thirty pages to a few blog posts. I have also removed all notes, footnotes, and references, and while I have quoted the author extensively, mostly I have restated his conclusions in my words.

He writes about five contexts: Context 1: Western Europe; Context 2: European Settler-based colonies; Context 3 and 4: Eastern Europe; and Context 5: Everywhere else. I have chosen to write about mainly Contexts 1, 2, and some on 5. All are interesting, but I think these more so.

He also has divided his theory into historical and statistical parts. While I’ve read through the statistical part of the study several times and closely, and it makes sense to me. I am not all that good with statistics, if anyone else is, I’d be interested in your conclusions. I’ve pretty much limited myself to the historical section of his study, which is more in my field of competence. All quotes are from the paper. You will, of course, find the link to the full paper, including references, footnotes, and far from least, the statistical work that supports this historical narrative.

Also, Greg Scandlen at ‘The Federalist’ wrote on this as well, his very superficial (although accurate) overview is here.

Religious actors played a huge role in post-Enlightenment modernization–although secular social scientists almost unanimously deny it. How do we know this? Partly because history tells us so, and partly because the historical study of statistical variables tell us so, and partly because we have eyes to see, and some measure of common sense. The author says this:

I argue that Western modernity, in its current form, is profoundly shaped by religious factors, and although many aspects of this “modernity” have been replicated in countries around the world, religion shaped what spread, where it spread, how it spread, and how it adapted to new contexts

In particular, conversionary Protestants (CPs) were a crucial catalyst initiating the development and spread of religious liberty, mass education, mass printing, newspapers, voluntary organizations, most major colonial reforms, and the codification of legal protections for nonwhites in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These innovations fostered conditions that made stable representative democracy more likely—regardless of whether many people converted to Protestantism. Moreover, religious beliefs motivated most of these transformations. In this blunt form, without evidence or nuance, these claims may sound overstated and offensive. Yet the historical and statistical evidence of CPs’ influence is strong, and the cost of ignoring CPs in our models is demonstrably high. […]

For example, stable democracy first emerged in Protestant Europe and British-settler colonies, and by World War I every independent, predominantly Protestant country was a stable democracy—with the possible exception of Germany. Less stable versions of democracy developed in Catholic areas with large Protestant and Jansenist minorities, such as France. However, democracy lagged in Catholic and Orthodox parts of Southern and Eastern Europe where Protestants had little influence. A similar pattern existed outside Europe.

In European settler based colonies, Protestant based ones (United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) are far more democratic than the otherwise similar, but Catholic based ones such as Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, and Costa Rica. You will note that this also weakens the theory that secularization tends to promote democracy, as the author says, the United States is far more religious than Uruguay. It is also worth noting that one set are all former British colonies and the other all-former Spanish colonies. What that seems to tell us is that, whichever colonial regime we choose (and these were the main two on offer) they seemed to export quite well.

I start with Western Europe and North America because that is where representative democracy was first developed. In this, I follow the author, and for the same reason. This is the baseline, if we can’t find links here, they are unlikely. If we can, and then we also find them in the other contexts we make our case stronger, possibly much stronger.

I too think the classical origin of democracy may well be overemphasized. Sure, Athenian, Enlightenment, and Deist roots exist, and were known, and important, but much of this is also paralleled by earlier specifically religious terms, especially arguments for political pluralism, electoral reform, and limitations of state power.

For example, Calvinists tried to reconstruct states along “godly” lines and limit sinful human institutions. Perhaps as a result, most Enlightenment democratic theorists came from Calvinist families or had a Calvinist education, even if they were either not theologically orthodox or personally religious (e.g., John Locke, Rousseau, Hugo Grotius, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Patrick Henry, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton), and they secularized ideas previously articulated by Calvinist theologians and jurists. For example, Hobbes’ and Locke’s social contracts are secular versions of Puritan and Nonconformist covenants, and Locke’s ideas about the equality of all people are explicitly religious.

I would add that the perhaps most famous definition of representational democracy, Abraham Lincoln’s “of the people, by the people, for the people” was not original but an almost direct quote of John Wycliffe. Whose influence echoes down to us through not only his Bible, which strongly influenced Tyndale’s, but he also influenced Martin Luther, Jan Huss, and I think, John Calvin as well. Here is perhaps the first expression of what would be the major strains of the Reformation.

Moreover, the religious context influenced whether Enlightenment-linked revolutions gave birth to stable democracy. The Protestant English and Scottish Enlightenments were not anti-Christian, and where they spread, democracy flourished. The “Catholic” French Enlightenment was virulently anti-Christian (particularly anti-Catholic), and where it spread, stable democracy did not. The French Revolution devolved into violence and inspired both totalitarianism and democracy. Similarly, anticlerical Enlightenment governments formed in virtually every independent Catholic country in Europe and Latin America, but did not lead to stable democracy. […]

For example, even in nineteenth-century Great Britain, expansions of suffrage and reforms of the electoral system were directly tied to pressure by Evangelical Anglicans and Nonconformists—in this case, including nonstate Catholics.

Ideas are powerful things, but if those who hold them are crushed and killed, they don’t become the conventional wisdom. So, if power wasn’t dispersed enough, or secular and religious forces came to blows too much, democracy often did not last. In the next sections, we’ll look at how CPs fostered greater separation of church and state, helped to disperse power and, create the conditions which helped form stable democracies.

Next: PRINTING, NEWSPAPERS, AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE

Source: The Missionary Roots of Liberal Democracy

70 Years Ago

10 Sunday May 2015

Posted by Neo in Church/State, Faith

≈ 17 Comments

Tags

Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, British Empire, Dwight D. Eisenhower, VE Day, Winston Churchill, World War II

THE MISSION OF THIS ALLIED FORCE WAS FULFILLED

AT 0241 LOCAL TIME, MAY 7, 1945

SIGNED/ EISENHOWER

And so it ended, in Europe. This weekend we celebrate the 70th anniversary of that great day, the day that Nazi Germany died. Eisenhower himself referred to it as The Great Crusade, and so it was. For us all but especially for the British it had been a long road since Poland, and Norway, and France had fallen, and they stood alone, supported only by the Empire in those bleak days of 1940.

In those days, if you were not in one of the few English speaking countries, you were subject to a to a totalitarian government. It had been a very long five years since Churchill had said this:

We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.

[A side note on language, nearly every word in the above extract os of Anglo-Saxon origin, except one. That one is surrender, and it’s a French word.]

And that is pretty much what happened. At the end of May 1944, there were something like 1.4 million American soldiers in Great Britain. As we got to really know each other it became clear that our countries would never be the same again. Bismarck had said that the salient fact of the nineteenth century was that England and America spoke the same language. The salient fact of the twentieth century became that the English speaking people would defend freedom at all times from any enemy.

For VE day was not the end, American, British and Commonwealth troops all knew they would be travelling halfway around the world to finish the job in Japan. We were very lucky that British and American boffins made that invasion unnecessary, and, in fact, so were the Japanese.

And then the long watch began as it became clear that the Soviet Union was the same kind of evil empire as we had just defeated. And so until 1990 we again stood shoulder to shoulder this time against armageddon itself, and again we won through. it was long, it was boring, it was expensive, and it was frightening, but our people never flinched, as indeed they never had against Germany and japan.

And so, as you look around today, give thanks to those soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines from our countries, who are so thin on the ground now but who saved us all from what could so easily have been.

But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new dark age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves, that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say,This was their finest hour.

And so it was! For as Proverbs tells us:

He that soweth iniquity shall reap vanity: and the rod of his anger shall fail.

A City Upon a Hill

23 Sunday Mar 2014

Posted by Neo in Church/State, Politics

≈ 16 Comments

Tags

American Revolution, British Empire, Edmund Burke, England, English Civil war, English Reformation, Henry, United States

Too often I find myself frustrated with young men (and it does seem to be mostly men), it often seems that they have no idea of things that have gone before. It also strikes me that they are much too given to teleological argument in history. Especially since the history of English (and American) resistance has been almost invariably a desire to go back to “the good old law”. Eventually, I cool off and remember how smart my dad got when I went to college, and even more so, work. But, I have long since decided that I tell the truth as I see it, if you don’t want it with the bark on, don’t deal with me.

This will go somewhat off topic, although it is as applicable to our faith as it is anything else, so if you’re reading it, it was because Jessica in her kind heart approved the digression.

In comments the other day Pancakes denigrated American exceptionalism with the catch phrases we always hear, and as always, it set me off, so let look at it a bit.

Firstly, American Exceptionalism is a bit of a misnomer, in reality it is transplanted British Exceptionalism. As Alexis de Tocqueville told us: “The American is the Englishman left to himself.” But in addition to that, the whole theory runs in a nearly straight line from King Alfred the Great through that meadow at Runnymede, through Henry VIII, through the first British Civil war and the Glorious Revolution, and didn’t split until what many call the Second British Civil War (that’s what is popularly called The American Revolution). That why I often say that American history started in 1776, until then it was just a facet of British history. In truth, hopes of a reconciliation didn’t die until the Hessian mercenaries landed, it never pays to use foreign troops in an internal Anglo-American dispute. And as Edmund Burke said on 22 March 1775

First, the people of the colonies are descendants of Englishmen. England, Sir, is a nation, which still I hope respects, and formerly adored, her freedom. The colonists emigrated from you when this part of your character was most predominant; and they took this bias and direction the moment they parted from your hands. They are therefore not only devoted to liberty, but to liberty according to English ideas, and on English principles.

He was right. We should probably note that in the English Civil War many (especially New Englanders) went back to England to take up arms with their families. And for Parliament, most of the New England colonists were from what has come to be called the Eastern Association. And there have always been rumors a couple of the regicides were sheltered for the rest of their life in New England. Virginia was mostly settled by low church Anglicans, who also supported Parliament. In the Revolution, we see the same split, both in America and in England as well. This may well be the only time when Edmund Burke, William Pitt the Elder and Charles James Fox found themselves on the same side of anything, and it was the American side, opposed to the North Ministry. George the Third referred to it for the rest of his life as “my Presbyterian War”.

As a bit of aside, Geoffrey wondered last week why we conflate political terms into church politics, and this may well be the answer, we’ve been doing it since the English Civil war, maybe since Magna Charta, and maybe even longer.

The American Revolution pitted the same sides against each other as the Civil War had, even many of the same families.

Did you notice that I called Henry VIII a major waypoint in American history? I did that for a reason. Henry is amongst other things the man who turned England’s face away from Europe out into the world. This is the major effect of the English Reformation. When England has thought itself to be an adjunct of Europe, it has always demeaned itself, during the Norman occupation, during the Angevin Empire, and now as well. England (in the classical sense meaning Great Britain, actually) has at almost all other times, during the Anglo-Saxon age when England came close to establishing a Nordic confederacy before “1066 and all that”, and after the Reformation, when the Royal Navy, which Henry VIII established, came to rule the waves, everywhere, only giving up that rule for parity with the United States in 1921. The British Empire, especially the first empire is quite simply, a Tudor enterprise

I also think that the Protestant faith(s) themselves have contributed greatly to the spread of English values, with the emphasis on vocation and hard (and superb) work in any sphere being very pleasing to the Lord, especially as compared to the ascetic tradition of Catholicism.

I think it probably important to note that the industrialization of the United states was heavily underwritten by British firms and banks. Why? I’d say most likely because here, like there, the rule of law prevailed, even above the government. Their money, if their investment was wise, was safe. Some tin pot dictator was not going to steal it.

Daniel Hannan, in his latest book, speaks of that day in August of 1941 when Roosevelt walked (really he did) across the gangplank from USS Augusta to HMS Prince of Wales for Church parade, as the band of the Prince of Wales struck up the Stars and Stripes Forever. Churchill later exulted, and correctly, “The Same Language, The Same Hymns, the Same Ideals. The lesson for the day came from Joshua 1:

As I was with Moses, so I will be with you

I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee

Be strong and of good courage

I can’t remember for sure but I am quite sure that the final hymn that day was this:

After all the former First Sea Lord and the former Assistant Secretary of the Navy would have known that it is the official hymn of both navies. They also both knew on that foreboding Sunday morning that freedom had become a fugitive in the night, she existed almost no place where English was not spoken. From Brest through the Japanese home Islands, from the North Pole to Africa all was either communist, nazi, fascist or some other variant of totalitarianism. Freedom in the world is a gift from the English Speaking peoples, and none other, purchased at a very high price, in both blood and treasure.

On that day, and on many others they pledged themselves, and us to make the world safe for

Government of the People, by the People, and for the People.

And no, I didn’t quote Lincoln here, he borrowed the quote himself. It was originally written in 1384 by John Wycliffe. Such a phrase in the 14th century could not have been written in anything but English.

Remembrance Day

10 Sunday Nov 2013

Posted by Neo in Church/State, Politics

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

British Empire, history, Remembrance Day, United Kingdom

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place: and in the sky
The larks still bravely singing fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead: Short days ago,
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved: and now we lie
In Flanders fields!

Take up our quarrel with the foe
To you, from failing hands, we throw
The torch: be yours to hold it high
If ye break faith with us who die,
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields

Most, if not all of you know that I am a Yank. Actually I’m a rather patriotic, conservative one with a bent for military history, and that is why I asked Jess if I could post this here. In the States today we are celebrating Veterans Day, it is the day we thank our living veterans and serving service people. Your Remembrance Day is analogous to our Memorial Day which is 30 May. The short form is that it comes from Decoration Day, which in our history was the day on which the veterans of The Grand Army of the Republic decorated the graves of the veterans of our Civil War, it now honors all of our war dead. So for us, Veterans Day honors the living, although if we’re completely honest, both days honor both in the public’s mind.

But, we here in the Great Republic are aware that in the last hundred years we have never fought alone, we have, in all our wars (yes, even Vietnam, Thank You Australia) fought beside at least one other member or former member of the British Empire. In most we have fought together with all of you. And we have been very proud to do so.

And that’s why I wanted to post this here.

We are also aware that Britain, and especially the Royal Navy was the major force that ended chattel slavery in western civilization. Sometimes we think you forget how good you have been for the world. Eventually more than 600,000 Americans would die to end slavery here, and it was worth it, as were your efforts. And that doesn’t even touch upon the longest period of (mostly) peace between major powers, which has come to be called justifiably The Pax Brittanica. Your history in the modern world is something to be very proud of, and we, the rowdy colonials who fought a war against you to preserve our rights as Englishmen, salute you.

You will commemorate the centennial of the beginning of the Great War next year. We and the Canadians have been and will continue celebrating the bicentennial of the War of 1812. It was sort of a silly war, and essentially ended status quo ante but it has echoed down 200 years of North American history because it was the making of two nations, Canada, and the United States. It is quite often referred to here as the Second War of Independence because it unified us, as it did the Canadians. The other thing it did was allow us to train up a military which would grow to become world class. We knew we were on the way when in 1814, our soldiers were able to stand toe to toe with the best in the world: The British regulars. Of course, you went on and burned Washington (Many of us wouldn’t mind much, if you did it again). Nor was that the last time British troops paraded in Washington under arms. That was fifty years ago this month, when a detachment of the Black Watch was included in President Kennedy’s funeral procession to Arlington.

But what I really wanted to talk about today are two men, both veterans of the Great War, who won both the American Medal of Honor and one the Victoria Cross as well. Both were posthumous. In fact they were both awarded in the fall of 1921. One was a soldier of the empire, and one was an American doughboy. This is the story of the British recipient.

FROM THE LONDON TIMES of OCT. 18, 1921

Yesterday morning General Pershng laid the Congressional Medal of Honour on the grave of the Unknown British Warrior in Westminster Abbey. The simple and beautiful ceremony seemed full of the promise of new and happier times. And what we call Nature appeared to have laid her approval on the hopes that it aroused.

That the United States should confer on an unknown British Warrior the highest military honour that can be bestowed by its Government, that jealously guarded and rarely granted Medal of Honour, which can only be won “at the risk of life, above and beyond the call of duty”; that Congress should pass a special Act enabling this honour to be paid to one who was not a citizen of the United States; that by the request and in the presence of the American Ambassador the medal should be laid upon the tomb by the hand of the great soldier who is now the successor of Washington, Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan as General of the Armies of the United States, and that the ceremony should take place while the eyes of all the world are turned to the coming Congress at Washington.

Here is great matter for pride and hope; and it seemed to be by something more than mere accident or the working of unalterable law that, just at the beginning of the ceremony, the sun should stream down, in its natural gold, through a window not yet painted, upon the Union Jack that was spread at the foot of the Unknown Warrior‘s grave. The ancient mystery of the great Abbey is never wholly dispelled by the light of day. Yesterday, as ever, she preserved her immemorial secrets and her ever brooding silence; yet brightness, colour, confidence were the notes of the ceremony; and, contrasting the sunshine of yesterday with the tragic gloom remembered on other occasions since August, 1914, one could not but believe that the externals matched the inner truth of the act, and that the modern history which, as the Dean of Westminster reminded us, began with the war in which the Unknown Warrior gave his life was about, through him and his like,to bring joy and peace to the world.

With the Union Jack at its foot and the wreaths bestowed about its edge, the stone that temporarily covers the Unknown Warrior’s grave near the west end of the Abbey was bare, save for a little case full of rosaries and sacred emblems that lies at its head. The space about it was shut off from the rest of the Nave by a barrier, through which passed only those who had been specially invited to seats of honour round the grave. The Nave was packed with people facing north and south, and lined with soldiers and sailors of the United States Army and Navy, among them some of General Pershing’s picked battalion, strapping fellows in khaki or blue, who seemed to have all the smartness and the immobility to which we are accustomed in British troops on such occasions.

[…]

Backed by a row of Abbey dignitaries were the Dean of Westminster, the American Ambassador, and General Pershing, standing at the gravehead, and facing up the great church.

At the invitation of the Dean, the American Ambassador then spoke as follows:

“By an Act of the Congress of the United States, approved on March 4 of the present year, the President was authorized “to bestow, with appropriate ceremonies, military and civil, a Medal of Honour upon the unknown unidentified British soldier buried in Westmister Abbey.” The purpose of Congress was declared by the Act itself, in these words: “Animated by the same spirit of comradeship in which we of the American forces fought alongside of our Allies, we desire to add whatever we can to the imperishable glory won by the deeds of our Allies and commemorated in part by this tribute to their unknown dead.”

The Congressional Medal, as it is commonly termed because it is the only medal presented “in the name of Congress,” symbolizes the highest military honour that can be bestowed by the Government of the United States. It corresponds to the Victoria Cross and can be awarded only to an American warrior who achieves distinction “at the risk of life, above and beyond the call of duty.”

A special Act of Congress was required to permit the placing of it upon the tomb of a British soldier. The significance of this presentation, therefore, is twofold. It comprises, in addition to the highest military tribute, a message of fraternity direct from the American people, through their chosen representatives in Congress, to the people of the British Empire.

There were two soldiers. One was British. The other was American. They fought under different flags, but upon the same vast battlefield. Their incentives and ideals were identical. They were patriot warriors sworn to the defence and preservation of the countries which they loved beyond their own lives. Each realized that the downfall of his own free land would presage the destruction of all liberty. Both were conscious of the blessings that had flowed from the English Magna Charta and the American Constitution. Well they knew that the obliteration of either would involve the extinguishment of the other. So with consciences as clear as their eyes and with hearts as clean as their hands they could stand and did stand shoulder to shoulder in common battle for their common race and common cause.There was nothing singular, nothing peculiar, about them. They typified millions so like to themselves as to constitute a mighty host of undistinguishable fighting men of hardy stock. A tribute to either is a tribute to all.

Though different in rank, these two soldiers were as one in patriotism, in fidelity, in honour,and in courage. They were comrades in the roar of battle. They are comrades in the peace of this sacred place.

One, the soldier of the Empire, made the supreme sacrifice, and, to the glory of the country whose faith he kept, he lies at rest in this hallowed ground enshrined in grateful memory. The other, equally noble and equally beloved, is by my side. Both live and will ever live in the hearts of their countrymen.

What more fitting than that this soldier of the great Republic should place this rare and precious token of appreciation and affection of a hundred millions of kinsmen upon the tomb of his comrade, the soldier of the mighty Empire! Proudly and reverently, by authority of the Congress and the President, I call upon the General of the Armies of the United States, fifth only in line as the successor of Washington, Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan, to bestow the Medal of Honour upon this typical British soldier who, though, alas! in common with thousands of others, “unknown and unidentified,” shall never be “unwept, unhonoured, and unsung.”

Then General Pershing said:

One cannot enter here and not feel an overpowering emotion in recalling the important events in the history of Great Britain that have shaped the progress of the nations. Distinguished men and women are here enshrined who, through the centuries, have unselfishly given their services and their lives to make that record glorious. As they pass in memory before us there is none whose deeds are more worthy, and none whose devotion inspires our admiration more, than this Unknown Warrior. He will always remain the symbol of the tremendous sacrifice by his people in the world’s greatest conflict.

It was he who, without hesitation, bared his breast against tyranny and injustice. It was he who suffered in the dark days of misfortune and disaster, but always with admirable loyalty and fortitude. Gathering new strength from the very force of his determination, he felt the flush of success without unseemly arrogance. In the moment of his victory, alas! we saw him fall in making the supreme gift to humanity. His was ever the courage of right, the confidence of justice. Mankind will continue to share his triumph, and with the passing years will come to strew fresh laurels over his grave.

As we solemnly gather about this sepulchre, the hearts of the American people join in this tribute to their English-speaking kinsman. Let us profit by the occasion, and under its inspiration pledge anew our trust in the God of our fathers, that He may guide and direct our faltering footsteps into paths of permanent peace. Let us resolve together, in friendship and in confidence, to maintain toward all peoples that Christian spirit that underlies the character of both nations.
And now, in this holy sanctuary, in the name of the President and the people of the United States, I place upon his tomb. the Medal of Honour conferred upon him by special Act of the American Congress, in commemoration of the sacrifices of our British comrade and his fellow-countrymen,and as a slight token of our gratitude and affection toward this people.

On the conclusion of his speech the Congressional Medal of Honour was handed by Admiral Niblack to General Pershing, who, stooping down, laid it on the grave, above the breast of the unknown hero beneath. Shining there, with its long ribbon of watered blue silk, it lay, a symbol of the past, a pledge for the future.

And General Pershing stood at the salute to his fallen comrade.

Which is entirely appropriate as well. As most of my American readers will be aware, any recipient of the Medal of Honor is entitled to be saluted first by all American service members.

[It should also be noted that on Armistice Day that year, by order of the King, the American Unknown Soldier was awarded the Victoria Cross. ]

There is considerably more, here is the link to the entire article from the Times, it is very moving.

After all the speeches and the award the congregation joined in singing

It has been a very long century since that last quiet August weekend of the Edwardian Age. It has been filled far too often with the roar of the guns, and the rattle of musketry followed by the sounding of the Last Post. But the mission has been maintained, it will never be won, although we can and should pray that it will be less horrific going forward. But all around the world, freedom loving people have learned of the steadfast valor even unto death of English speaking soldiers, sailors, and airmen. We are proud of our part, yes. But we are equally proud to be your allies and friends.

Every night

For The Fallen
With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.

Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres,
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted;
They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England’s foam.

But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.