“Words build your world”
a man at a party.
…
I respect Sir Winston Churchill, remembered as the man who warned. Remembered by me as the man who distrusted the word appease. He could see better than most, maybe because he valued words more than most. For example, during the Allied advance up Italian mountains, if a paper crossed his desk that “today the Poles and Canadians were fighting with the Germans” he would insist on clarity: “fighting against the Germans.”
Clear straight words mean an interest in honest thinking. But if we allow our words to get mixed up then our thinking is unclear, and we may move into a different “Zone of Interest.” (great art movie about Nazis)
In a recent essay, (footnote) about the classic oil paintings at the National Gallery, I mentioned the Roman Legions decimating units that deserted in battle. In the shadow of battles in Vietnam, in the 1974 spy story The Intriguers, (footnote) two “establishment aged” spies, Lorna and Eric, serve a chief who is a Churchill figure. They are talking to a “hippie aged” daughter.(p119) The daughter believed, wrongly, that the chief had said, ‘decimate to the last man.’:
QUOTE
“Just a minute, Eric.” Lorna peeled a paper off a second candy bar and spoke patiently: “My dear girl, your father speaks English, not gobbledegook. The word ‘decimate’ comes from the Latin word for ten. In the old days, if a conquered village misbehaved, the Roman were much nicer about it than we are nowadays. They didn’t wipe it out with bombs and napalm. They simply marched a legion into place… …the word does not and cannot possibly meant to massacre or annihilate. It’s logically impossible to decimate to the last man. You’ll always have nine men left.
UNQUOTE
Eric reported a phone call, from an imposter, who was pretending to be the chief …’told me he was disinterested in a certain murderer. He also said that a certain agent was presently in a certain town in Oklahoma and that I was supposed to contact him there.’”
Eric knew his words: Presently does not mean “at present” it means in the future, and contact, in 1974, is not a verb.
QUOTE
Lorna spoke in the same calm and patient voice. “Miss Borden, disinterested does not mean the same thing as uninterested, which is presumably the word for which the man on the phone was fumbling.”
“A judge is supposed to be disinterested, “ I said. “That means he’s got no obligations or commitments to the parties appearing before him: He’s quite objective about the case. But he’s not supposed to be uninterested. That means he’s just bored with whole preceding, and that is the meaning the man in Washington really wanted to convey.”
UNQUOTE
Incidentally, a month ago the BBC misused the word disinterested. In the morning I sent an e-mail ,“Words are a journalist’s bread and butter!” to correct them: I was probably one of many to do so. In the evening I saw the word had been corrected.
A term we didn’t have when I was a young is “force protection.” Surely meant for peacetime. For example, what if the US army is trying to clear the roads to keep thousands of people in Somalia from starving to death, and what if the warlords kill as many as 19 soldiers in the city of Mogadishu? Then in the name of force protection, lacking any war to “win,” the innocent soldiers must pull out, suffering the civilians to die. Because US lives are “priceless.”
Another phrase is Aide to Civil Power, the Commonwealth doctrine for when the army must be used as, say, riot police, or to fight urban guerrillas. Under this term, a civil police officer would ideally be with every unit of soldiers. This doctrine, for peacetime, states things like never fire on full automatic if single shots will do.
From The Intriguers, published during echoes of the riot at Kent State University, when Matt Helm’s code name is Eric:
QUOTE
“…So the cops she’d been taught to trust went and shot her in the back while she was trying to get to safety inside the girls’ dormitory.”
“It was an accident , Carl!” I said. It sounded just as ineffectual as when Rullington had said it to me.
“Accident, hell!” He snorted. “Cops aren’t supposed to have accidents like that! If there’s a choice between risking the life of an innocent citizen and getting killed, a cop is supposed to stand right there and die, goddammit! Hell, you and I, Eric, we’ve both had the cyanide capsule between our teeth, ready to take a bite of death just to save our native land a little embarrassment….”
UNQUOTE
The Nazis put a price on life during the occupation of Yugoslavia: In their fascist reasoning, they said that for every one of us German killed by the resistance, ten of them villagers would die. A price of ten. But we Allies would never say “ten”—our guys are priceless. Consider a lonely soldier, the most forward of the allies in the Apennine mountains. Spots a few enemy. Gets on the walkie talkie. Soon many shells are falling from artillery, and from ships off shore, and from the wings (20 mm cannon) of fighter planes. Too many? Sure it’s shocking to kill so many Germans at once, but what is the “thought out” alternative?
One shows “not thought out” when one sputters, “Ya but—but, there must be another way!” Like the wild west cliche of a civilian looking up at sheriff up on his horse, berating the sheriff for shooting, but without any clarity of thought and words, nothing to offer except a mythical “another way.”
Words matter. What if citizens mix up war zone with conflict zone, and peacetime with a declaration of wartime?
In an imaginary world I see tired troops, lined up on the parade square, trusting their colonel. This during wartime, near the Rhine river, hoping to push to Berlin, hoping to soon end the war, so everyone can go home at last. After dismissing his troops, the colonel groans and whispers to his major, “I had planned to take tomorrow’s hill with only two per cent casualties, but goddam headquarters has ordered us to save Nazi civilians, firing fewer shells, telling me my boys must suffer ten per cent casualties!”
I’m not sure I could be the judge of whether my dear neighbours —with not a Churchill among them— would be so Nazi as to put a “ten” price on our boy’s heads, and mix up their words for conflict zone and war zone. Sometimes, it’s hard to be disinterested.
… …
… …
Sean Crawford
Having served under civil police and military police after the Munich massacre,
Without pre-judging any Jew, German or Israeli,
February
2024
Sources:
~Earlier this month, from February 5, is Contemplating the Death Penalty after leaving the National Gallery.
~I choked up, because of family involvement, during a discussion of Zone of Interest. It’s a fine movie, now in theatres, but I won’t discuss it today.
~At Forbidden Planet in London I found The Intriguers, original copyright 1974, Titan Books 2015, by Donald Hamilton, part of the Matt Helm series.
~During peacetime, soldiers must have clear wording for their rules for engaging with civilians. Lyrics to “(four dead in) Ohio” https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=lyrics+four+dead+in+ohio&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
