The Roundup - Edition 117

A message from 
Rich Jones, Head.

From time to time, usually after a request from members of the St Chris community, I will publish the week's Morning Talk, in full, in the Roundup.  I have had several requests for the Senior School Morning Talk so here it is:

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"Morning everyone, I've brought a chair with me this morning.

Not particularly exciting, I appreciate.  In fact, as props for a Morning Talk go, it's probably one of my least imaginative.  But I want you to keep an eye on it, because I'll come back to it in a moment.

On Wednesday, it will be Armistice Day.  The 11th of November.  A day when, at eleven o'clock, people across the country will stop for two minutes to remember those whose lives have been affected by war.  And when we talk about war, we tend to talk about numbers.  Millions killed in the First World War.  Millions more in the Second World War.  Countless others wounded, displaced, orphaned, or left to rebuild their lives.  The numbers are staggering.  But I've been wondering whether, strangely, the bigger the number becomes, the less we actually understand it.

If I tell you that millions of people died, you know that's terrible.  Of course, you do.  But can you really imagine a million people?  Can you imagine ten million?  I can't.  But I imagine one person.  One person.  With a name, a family, friends, interests, a sense of humour, perhaps a favourite football team, perhaps somebody they were in love with.  Somebody who had plans for the weekend and dreams abou the future.  And that's what I want to talk about this morning.  Not armies, not generals, not victories ... just people.  Because nobody who died in a war was just a number.  They were a 'whole person' - with dreams, aspirations, faults and flaws, a whole very human person, just like you.

Let me tell you about someone called Norman Gaudie.

Norman loved football.  In fact, he was rather good at it.  He played as a reserve centre-forward for Sunderland Football Club.  He also worked as a railway clerk in Newcastle.  An ordinary job, an ordinary life, with football and work and all the things that make up a person's world.  Then came the First World War.  In 1916, Norman was called up for military service.  But there was a problem.  Norman was deeply religious, and he believed that taking part in war, even in a supporting role, was wrong.  Now, you might agree with him.  You might not.  That's rather the point.  Norman refused to serve.  He was imprisoned, subjected to military discipline, and eventually sent to France, where refusing orders could carry the death penalty.  Norman was sentenced to death, although the sentence was later commuted.

Imagine that for a moment.  A footballer.  A railway clerk.  Someone who had probably spent much of his life worrying about things like whether Sunderland would win at the weekend, suddenly facing the possibility of being executed because he would not take part in a war.  He survived, but his life was fundamentally changed.  And I wonder what you would have done in his position.  Would you have stood by your beliefs, even if it meant losing your freedom or your life?  Or would you have made a different decision?  I'm not asking you to decide whether Norman was right or wrong.  I am asking you to recognise that he was a person facing an almost unimaginable choice.  And I think he deserves to be remembered ...

Now, let me tell you about somebody else.

Her name was Edith Cavell.  Edith was a British nurse working in Belgium when the First World War began.  She cared for wounded soldiers, including men from opposing sides of the conflict.  And that matters and was very unusual.  Because when Edith looked at a wounded man, she did nto simply see a British soldier for a German soldier.  She saw somebody who was hurt and needed help.  During the war, Edith also helped three British soldiers escape from German-occupied Belgium.  She was arrested and, in October 1915, executed.  The night before her death, she said something extraordinary.  "Patriotism is not enough.  I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone".

I think about those words quite often, especially these days and times we live in.  Here was a woman who was about to die, yet she was talking about the importance of not hating other people.  Not hating an entire nation.  Not allowing war to strip away her humanity.  I find that remarkable.

And it reminds us that courage isn't always about carrying a weapon.  Sometimes it is about caring for somebody.  Sometimes it is about refusing to hate.  Sometimes it is about remaining human when the world around you seems to have forgotten how.

Which brings me back to this chair.  Because this chair could belong to anybody.  It could belong to a young soldier who never came back home.  It could belong to a mother whose children were killed in a bombing raid.  It could belong to somebody who survived the war, returned home, sat down in their favourite chair, and discovered that they could never quite be the person they had been before.

And that's important too.  Because remembrance isn't only about those who died.  It's about those who came back changed.  Those who lived with injuries, grief, fear, and memories.  Those who spent the rest of their lives trying to make sense of what they had experienced.  And the families who carried those experiences with them.

At St Chris, we have a long history of questioning violence, of valuing peace, of believing that there are better ways for people to resolve their problems.  I think that's something we should be proud of.  But I also think it's entirely possible to believe deeply in peace while remembering, with enormous gratitude and compassion, those who served, those who suffered and those who sacrificed so much.

Remembrance doesn't have to mean celebrating war.  It doesn't have to mean celebrating victory.  And it certainly doesn't require us all to agree about whether every war was justified.

What it does ask us to do is something much simpler, and perhaps much harder.  To recognise the humanity of the people caught up in events far beyond their control.  People who, in many cases, didn't choose the war, didn't start the war and would have given almost anything for it never to have happened.

And I think there's a responsibility that comes with that.  Because remembering the past is not much use, if it doesn't change how we think about the present!  When we hear about people dying in conflicts today, when we see photographs of ruined cities, when we hear that thousands have been displaced or killed, we mustn't allow those enormous numbers to make us forget the individuals behind them.

Every number is somebody.  Somebody who likes puddings, and hates fish, someone who talks too much and is always loud.  Somebody who laughs and sulks and gets angry and tries to impress.  Somebody who loves somebody else.  Somebody who had plans.

One person who had a name, a story, and a future.  And remember that behind every enormous number are countless individuals just like them.  Because remembrance is not about deciding who won.  It is about refusing to forget who was lost.  We will now have our silence."