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Although English I am a republican at heart. It is a long time since I felt any serious regard for the general concept of our hereditary monarchy or, in particular, for the grisly crew who presently embody it.Nevertheless, a week ago I found myself staring at the core symbol of that institution, the changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace, with tears streaming down my cheeks.  The occasion, do you doubt, was the playing by those soldiers in scarlet jackets and bearskins of 'The Star Spangled Banner'. What had brought about this ceremonial fusion of two cultures and allies needs no explanation.
The moment was ineffably poignant. Audience to the - quite beautifully rendered - playing of one nation's anthem by the show-piece troops of another was a motley, rag-tail and bob-tail collection of American citizens. Word of the event had been circulated. Whether London-based Afterwards I recalled Noel Cowards observation "it's strange how potent cheap music is". For the truth is that previously I'd never had too high an opinion of 'The Star Spangled Banner'. Oh, sure, no contest, it's way ahead of our own 'God Save The Queen' dirge that must prop up any league table of tribal chants: but I've always found the setting (by an English composer!) of Mr. Key's words a touch tinny. I never once heard the crowd before a ball game manage those final murderous top notes. Then, the other day, all that changed. I haven't had the tune out of my head this past week. It may be that all anthems require a background of adversity to bring out the best in them and prompt the best in us. The now official anthem of South Africa never seemed more unutterably touching than when issuing as the hymn of a viciously oppressed people. When played before the soccer match in which the French will elegantly expunge the English 'The Marseillaise' rings round the stadium as just so much cheap, jingoistic triumphalism. Played before the rugby game in which the blue shirted singers will be crushed by the might of England it sounds like a wistfully gallant salute from those facing the inevitable. The context is all important, it would seem. The context of Tuesday September 11th. is beyond all measure. But something that to date I have not seen given public utterance needs, I believe, to be given some form of formal, however puny, expression. The strikes at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were enormities. They were atrocious obscenities. They were also unbelievably tacky. They were ethical low blows. Cheap shots from cheap skates. Scaled up by a factor of infinity they were the equivalent of shooting Bill Hickock in the back. And as such they cannot but prove utterly counter-productive. Whether conceived as proselytizing attempts to further a fundamentalist faith or to further territorial possession they will have put back the cause that (along with ego-tripping) they sought to advance a thousand years. Terrorism is not a good career move for any interest.It was heartening for this republican Englishman to gather that many New Yorkers, sensing that a war of sorts had landed on their doorsteps, snatched a ray of comfort from memories of Britain's deadpan contempt for the worst that the Luftwaffe could manage. I remember the Blitz - just!- and my father was a fire-fighter in the ever-blazing holocaust of the London Docks. Along with St. Paul's, that same repaired Buckingham Palace, those same entirely re-built Docks, he survived to confirm for me that the game-plan of bombing a people into submission is the most self-defeatingly dumb of strategies. If New Yorkers need a little more moral support in that area right now, they could do worse than hunt out a recording of another example of 'cheap music's potency - Noel Cowards' salute to both a flower and a great city's mind-set, 'London Pride'. The past week has seen a mantra repeated right around the world: that the atrocities in America was a strike not just against the US but against democracy and freedom. First and last, no doubt, this is true. But the stark interim specific is that it was America that was targeted. When (ingrim literalness) the dust settles, your President's Administration will have to address two questions. Why us? Why at this particular moment in time? That though is, for a while, for the ever-changed future. For the present I would direct any reader's - certainly Mayor Guiliani's -to words written three score years and ten ago by the author of the finest novel written in the Twentieth Century and perhaps ever. Ford Madox Ford was a cosmopolitan Englishman who went largely without honor in his own country but was far more keenly appreciated in America. He had the utmost regard for New York and explained why in words that now resonate in spades: "The attraction of New York lies in the fact that, for me, she is the expression of the hope of all humanity. And she is the negation of the thing I hate most - of nationality. New York is not America because she is the expression of an ideal vaster and more humane. There has been nothing more disastrous for humanity than the conception of nationality.That men living on one side of an imaginary line called a 'frontier' should automatically hate people born on the other side of that line is a conception of madness - of the madness that the gods send topeople whom they are about to destroy". Yes. And to attempt to implant frontiers within people's minds is even more insane. Even more obscene. Because of the events of last week many will be left to grieve for the rest of their lives. But this consolation, at least, abides for those tough-minded enough to accept it. It is not to be thought that Johnny Appleseed's sturdiest fruiting will stay blighted for long. Because she is 'an ideal vaster and more humane' than single nation or blinkered creed, New York will flourish once again. Within the five boroughs live people drawn from the four corners of the earth: and before them stands a monument dedicated to Liberty and symbolising that they are free, within the common law, to believe what they wish to and, unmolested, live by that belief. In the long run New York is proof against bad men and bullies. God bless America. |
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