‘THE UNIVERSAL SOLDIER’

‘THE UNIVERSAL SOLDIER’

‘The Universal Soldier’ is a song lauding the cause of pacifism. (It was forbidden for RAF pilots to listen to it in ‘The Sixties’.)

C.S.Lewis in his “Why I Am Not a Pacifist” (The Weight of Glory) feelingly describes the life of a soldier. (He served in the trenches on The Western Front.)

“All that we fear from all the kinds of adversity , severally, is collected together in the life of a soldier on active service:

  • Like Sickness, it threatens pain and death
  • Like Poverty, it threatens ill lodging, cold, heat, thirst, and hunger
  • Like Slavery, it threatens toil, humiliation, injustice, and arbitrary rule
  • Like Exile, it separates you from all you love
  • Like The Galleys, it imprisons you at close quarters with uncongenial companions.

It threatens every temporal evil – every evil except Dishonour and Final Perdition….“

As we commence the second century after The Great War, it is heart-warming to an evolving chimpanzee to observe the universal expression of Honour accorded to the soldiers of that conflagration – and indeed all wars – at Armistice Day Services in London and across the world on The Eleventh Day of The Eleventh Month at The Eleventh Hour one hundred years after the ‘monstrous anger of the guns’ and ‘the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle’ (Wilfred Owen’s Anthem For Doomed Youth) fell silent.

Chugley, The Solemn, Silent Chimpanzee.

4 thoughts on “‘THE UNIVERSAL SOLDIER’”

  1. Great comment, Chugley!
    A Facebook friend recently posted the famous WW1 poem “In Flanders Fields”. The last verse holds a solemn warning to us who live to be responsible and dutiful in protecting those national values we hold dear.

    “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.”

    1. I am very encouraged that you appreciate my evolving thoughts Greg, which are so helped by the writings of Clive Staples Lewis! I wonder, but I don’t think he believed he was related to me, or got to the planet through some machinations of theistic evolution……hmmmmmm and Gibber! Gibber! Chugley

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