Is patriotism enough? Nurse Edith Cavell first raised the question before she was shot by the Germans for treason in 1916. She was an English nurse, matron of a Belgian hospital when the Germans invaded Belgium in 1914. She nursed both German and Allied soldiers, but also helped Allied soldiers to escape from occupied Belgium.

The Germans arrested her, and court martialled her for treason. Under German law she was sentenced to death. From this perspective, it seems strange that an English nurse working for a Belgian hospital in Belgium should be sentenced under German law – but that was the price of German occupation.

She raised the question on patriotism just before her execution, when she actually said that: “Patriotism is not enough”.

This phrase has been in my mind, as this country prepares for the most solemn day in its calendar – ANZAC day – a day of national mourning and unity which it shares with Australia. It commemorates the disastrous landings on the Gallipoli peninsula in Turkey in 1915. In New Zealand it’s not called Remembrance Day, or Veterans Day, or Memorial Day, as in other countries.

In the forty three years that I’ve lived in NZ, I’ve seen a revived connection with these ceremonies, as more people remember – though they may not understand – their history, and the heroism and the suffering of those young men who so often gave their lives. There are also many young people who now make the pilgrimage to Gallipoli to attend the dawn ceremonies there.

And one of the things that always saddens me about these ceremonies and rituals in my adopted country, is that this day also becomes an opportunity for some to bash the British in their sermons and speeches. It becomes a chance to blame others for a national tragedy, instead of a time of remembrance of the suffering of all those young men – Turkish, French, British, Indian, and Australian and New Zealanders.

And it happens all around the world, in some countries more than others. On the other hand, there are also many people around the world who have responded with the sort of insight and generosity that Nurse Cavell showed.

Another one who did have those insights was the officer commanding the Turks at Gallipoli. Fourteen years after the Gallipoli campaign, some of the most magnanimous and healing words ever spoken were written by this man, Kemal Ataturk, who by then had become the leader of Turkey. He was writing about the men who had invaded his country and who had died there. His words are engraved on a memorial at Gallipoli:

“Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives… are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours… you, the mothers, who sent their sons from faraway countries wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.”

I can never read these beautiful words without the tears welling in my eyes….

Kemal Ataturk was the great visionary leader who transformed Turkey into an enlightened and free country back in the twenties and thirties. In two years he abolished the Caliphate, emancipated women, closed religious courts and abolished religious law, replacing it with a secular civil code, and adopting the Western calendar. He introduced the Latin alphabet, abolished the fez, and gave the whole country surnames, since only the elite had them.

His foreign policy was simple: ‘Peace at home. Peace in the world’. These are the words and thoughts that rise above mere patriotism, and to use those unfashionable words, they encompass truth and beauty and goodness.

Peace has become an unfashionable word too. Patriotism seems more powerful and more admired. Wars are still fought, and yet there is a difference. It’s only in the last hundred years that international bodies have been set up, first the League of Nations, and then the United Nations, in an effort to address problems by talking, negotiating, and mediating.

Slow, imperfect and unsatisfactory as these processes often are, they’re a huge step forward from the days when the only way to solve a problem was to fight. And even Nurse Cavell’s hard fate would be different today, protected as she would be by the Geneva Convention.

But the ultimate irony of Nurse Cavell’s death is that in this modern age, she would have been a war criminal, since it’s now against the laws of war for a medical worker to use their protected status for military purposes. So maybe we haven’t made much progress after all.

Food for Threadbare Gourmets

A friend for lunch, and I needed a pudding. In the fruit bowl were three bananas and some passionfruit. So – banana fritters – something I hadn’t made for years and years. Sifting four ounces of flour and a pinch of salt into a bowl, I made a well in the middle, and dropped in an egg and a tablespoon of oil, and beat it, gradually adding half a cup of tepid water, and beating until it was smooth. Halve the bananas lengthwise, dip in the batter, and fry in hot deep oil until golden brown. Drain, and sprinkle with sugar, and serve with the passionfruit pulp and whipped cream.

Food for Thought

You must give some time to your fellow man. Even if it’s a little thing, do something for others – something for which you get no pay but the privilege of doing it.

Albert Schweitzer 1875 – 1965 Theologian, musician, philosopher, physician and medical missionary in Africa, Nobel Peace Prize winner