“Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” is a line from the Roman lyrical poet Horace’s Odes. It means. “It is sweet and becoming to die for one’s country,” and was used frequently by pro-war protagonists to recruit young men to fright in WWI.
This week, Britain is celebrating 25 years since the war in the Falklands.
I’ve done a lot of work over the last few years in Palestine, Northern Ireland and now in Sierra Leone. The news coverage of the current bloodshed in Gaza, mixed with the memories of the stories I’ve heard, and things I’ve seen abroad with work….I have to say I have found his weeks ‘celebration’ of the Falklands war very difficult.
Thatcher has publicly said “we should still rejoice” at the victory in 1982 saying “in the struggle against evil… we can all today draw hope and strength” from the Falklands victory…Fortune does, in the end, favour the brave”
Me, John and Muffle spent Thursday night depressing ourselves about the state of the world, and since then, I have been drawn back to one of my all time favourite poems – Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen. (I wish I’d had the intelligence to bring it up that night lads!)
Wilfred Own wrote the poem from the trenches during WWI as a direct response to war propagandist, Jenny Frost, who wrote poems exclaiming the virtues of war during WWI. He originally wrote it as a letter to her, from the trenches, but encouraged by his friend, and another fantastic anti-war poet, Siegfried Sasoonn, he wrote it as a poem. It was only published once the war was over and is for me better than anything any politician or leader has ever said about the realities of war. It is made all the more poignant, as he was killed in the last week of war, in 1918.
If you don’t read the whole poem, just read the last 4 lines. They are stunning and a perfect counter-balance to our ‘heroic’ pro-falkalnds war news coverage this weekend. Despite being written 90 years ago, I also think it is as relevant today, to those all over the world, where war and conflict dominates peoples lives, as it was all those years ago.
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