Compare and Contrast

 On Saturday evening, driving home from London, I listened to the moving account of  the children of Nuremberg defendants talking about the legacy in their lives of that famous trial.  The following day I listened to a radio play entitled Dante's Inferno.  It struck me straightaway that here was connecting theory with 20th century practice.

Inferno I begins....

"When half way through the journey of our life

• I found that I was in a gloomy wood,
• because the path which led aright was lost."

Inferno III

• "These wretched souls, who never were alive,
• were naked, and were sorely spurred to action
• by means of wasps and hornets that were there.
• The latter streaked their faces with their blood,
• which, after it had mingled with their tears,
• was at their feet sucked up by loathsome worms."
• I recall the picture painted on the walls of St Thomas church in Salisbury.  Hideous pictures of hell.  And surely we all, as Terence the Roman Playwright comments, 
•  "I am a man; I count nothing human foreign to me"  
• It's a terrible thought that we are made of the same fallible material.    
• 
  

  

  Hell Incarnate- St Thomas Church- Salisbury
  
  

  
  
  Next I recall a discussion on the poetry of Gerald Manley Hopkins, writing about what we now call depression, what his friend Robert Bridges noted as 'The terrible Poems'.  They were far from terrible, but his friend described them as 'awful', 'terrible', 'fearful'. 

• "O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall 
• Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. 
• Hold them cheap 
• May who ne'er hung there. 
• Nor does long our small 
• Durance deal with that steep or deep. 
• Here! creep, 
• Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: all 
• Life death does end and each day dies with sleep." 
• Gerard Manley Hopkins  (With thanks also to 'In Our Time'.)

The Spinning Lime Tree Seed

 

Hubschraubermuseum Bückeburg
Leonardo de Vinci's Manuel Helicopter

De Vinci worked as a military engineer for the Duke of Milan between 1487 and 1490.  In this time, 450 years before anything actually rose from the ground carrying humans, me made the sketch that the above model replicates, and is to be found in the Helicopter Museum in Buckeburg, Germany.  

Toy bamboo rotors have been found in China dating back to 300BC.  

Modern Japanese flying toys

As I gaze out on my street, the wind blows between the avenue of lime trees, and the seed cases take off, like a science fiction invasion of alien craft.  The seeds are set off a central stem to create a flywheel effect, carrying the rotating kinetic energy into the curved leaf fins.  The seed shoot upwards high above the parent tree.  

The real step forward in flight came when it was realised that the cross-section of the wing must be an aerofoil, not a thin piece of cloth as illustrated by de Vinci.  Flight is all about creating a vacuum above the wing.  The spinning lime tree seed forces air downward.  The weight of the seeds themselves maintain the vertical stability by rotating like a steam engine's 'governor'.

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I have always wondered why Leonardo's design has become so famous.  The most well known of these pictures is to be found in Paris, having been taken there by Napoleon.  I assume the fame is not so much the design, which anyone can see does not have the second screw necessary to stabilise the body of the plane.  Also these principles can easily be observed in nature.  But it is the audacity to also place humans on the machine.  It is not a surprise that the pictures remained in de Vinci's sketchbook.  They were for a different generation.

The World's War

David Olusoga is a professor of Public History at Manchester University.  He is of Nigerian and white English parentage.  His studied of the contribution of  non-European combatants in the first world war and wrote the book 'The World's War.

 These are the things I noted in particular.

1) German Fountain.  

The German Fountain

Built in Germany and transported to Istanbul as a gift from the German Kaiser Wilhelm II to the Sultan Abdulhamid II to commemorate his visit to the Ottoman Empire two years before. 

2) Panthéon de la Guerre

A 123 meter circular painting painted by  Pierre Carrier-Belleuse and Auguste François-Marie Gorguet during the fighting.  Olusoga noted that the painting was a picture also of what happened after the war.  The painting began as a very inclusive representation with honour even given to the Chinese Labour Corp.  As the war ended there was pressure to paint over the 'foreigners' to make room for the white Americans who had joined the war near the end. An American Businessman bought the painting in 1927, and displayed in Madison Gardens where it was very popular.  After the second world was it was no longer of interest and it was chopped up.  Only 7% was retained focusing on the Americans and is now displayed in Kansas City museum to the First World War. 

3) The Hamburg war memorial to the War in German East Africa.

A controversial memorial in a Park in Hamburg to the many African who died in the German East African Campaign.  It was restored and augmented by Nazi Germany.   

4)  Wünsdorf - A place in Eastern Germany with an extraordinary history. The Halbmondlager or Half Moon Camp, near Wünsdorf , 25 km from Berlin, was where non-white POWs were brought by the Germans during WWI where they were well looked after in the hope that they could be wooed into turning on their colonial masters.  The aspect of religion was also built up to given them the impression that German was very supportive of their rights to independence.  For Muslims they encouraged 'Holy War', a spirit that had already been evoked by the Ottoman Sultan.  

Lenin now stands alone. 
Wunsdorf became the centre of the Russian
occupation of East Germany

The first mosque in Germany-
Built of wood. 
In a POW Camp

5) The Chinese Labourer's graveyard.  ever thought about the extraordinary amount of work that went into constructing 400 miles of complex trenches?  A lot of the work was done by 100,000 Chinese indentured labourers who signed up to dig trenches and later in the war, service the tanks.  

These are the people who were truly forgotten after the war.  The CWC is trying to make up for it.  Long into 1919 the Chinese labourers were toiling on repairing the damage to the country side from the war, and collecting live ammunition and dead bodies from the battlefield.

Noyelle Sur mer Chinese Cemetery

What the Devil?!

The Kibworth Windmill

'Archaeologist James Wright said: "These marks are significant as they show real belief in Satan and demons lasted much later than is sometimes thought."   This comes from a story reported on the BBC website about the examination of carvings on a Leicestershire windmill dating back to 1711.  

Daniel Hutchinson 1711

"So people do not believe in Satan now?"  I ask.  "What do I make of the concept of Satan?"  I have recently read the ancient story of Job from the Jewish mystical books.  This is a story that debates the nature of good and evil.  Satan is described as a being who comes into the heavenly courts and persuades God to allow him to put Job, a good man,  to the test.  The test is whether Job will reject and curse God when things do not go his way.   Famously things get about as bad as they possibly can.   Ultimately Satan is not successful, but Job does feel completely abandoned and 'put out to dry' by God.  I'm interested why Job chooses to target God not Satan.  It is very clear in the story that Satan's authority comes ultimately from God.  God allows Job to suffer.  It is not God's choose, but ultimately everything happens with the authority of God.  Just as Pontius Pilate allowed Jesus to be executed against his better judgement, so Satan brings suffering to Job because he is allowed to do so.

Job's is angry with God because he can not understand why he suffers so.  Job asks the question that is often asked, 'does the creator attend to me as an individual, or is this all a mind game?  This is question raised in the story 'Touching the void', when in 1985, Joe Simpson calls out to God in his moment of need...and hears nothing.  Again it is the subject of Feuerbach's book 'The Essence of Christianity' .  Indeed, I had this discussion yesterday with my Muslim neighbours.  The Muslim idea is that we pray to God because it is good for us to do so, not that there is any connection with a supreme being.  It is ridiculous and egocentric to imagine this possible.

But if you are patient and continue reading Job to the end, God does appear and is clear about what's going on.  Or is he?  The message I read is that 'that things happen' and there is no questioning why.  They just happen, we are required to accept this.  Suffering in this context is not intended as a punishment.  But just as bad things happen, so do good things.   Ultimately Job's fortunes change.  The message is that it is personal.  We are not overlooked.  We are loved.  

So what about evil?  Evil forces, spirits, ideology moods?  Are they personal, or are they like Tsunamis, or avalanches, that just appear and will sweep aside all in their way? 

Evil is like treading in dog muck.  Not very nice.  It stinks.  So best we avoid becoming too familiar with it.