WILLIAM WALLACE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21640, 4 November 1933, Page 1 (Supplement)

WILLIAM WALLACE

BY KOTARK

LORD RAGLAN'S RUFFIAN

Lord Baglan has announced his opinion that William Wallace, " his country's saviour" as Burns called him, the greatest patriot-hero in Scottish history, as his countrymen have always deemed him, was nothing but a ruffian and a savage. It is an infamy that decent modern children are encouraged to do him honour and revere his memory. Probably what Lord Raglan thinks does not matter very much. Ho is entitled to his own opinion. That is the worst of history; or perhaps it is one of itfe most admirable features. There is practically nothing final and fixed. Even with our contemporaries it is not pass a final judgment. What will be the ultimate view of Mussolini, of Hitler, of Lloyd George? Will tho future be better able to assess their absolute value than wo who stand too close to them?

But Lord Raglan, with his sweeping condemnation, raises several interesting questions. One of the legacies of the war is the tendency to distrust all traditional judgments. Wo have lost faith, and with it apparently the power to produce any great art or initiate any strong vitalising impulse in the realm of spiritual values. An age of negation tends to magnify the value of criticism. We are more concerned to show how everybody else is wrong, and particularly to dwell on the false standards and judgments of the past. There has been a mania for revaluation of historical figures. It is not that there has been any new evidence on which to base conclusions; but the spirit of our age is destructive, iconoclastic. The heroes of the past are demonstrated to be villains of the deepest dye; tho villains of tradition are •surprisingly transmogrified into heroes. " Bless Thee, Bottom, bless thee, thou art translated."

Historical Judgments Take the case of Wallace. We know very little about him that historical research would consider authentic. He moves vague and vast through a period of unparalleled difficulty and danger for his fatherland. What he fwas in himself it is impossible to determine at this late day. But what he achieved for Scotland remains, and the impulses he initiated have been a potent force in moulding the subsequent development of his native land and in determining the lines upon which the British Empire should grow. It is not too much to say that the idea of free self-governing colonies such as New Zealand had its origin in the fight he fought over 6ix hundred years ago.

That he was a man of his times we accept as a matter of course. The historical evidence, what there is of it that is reliable, shows him to have be6n a magnificent fighting man. His prowess in battle became a legend, and we have clear evidence that ho was the only man in Scotland whom that mighty warrior Edward I. fully respected and feared. He was often a fugitive, he lived amid breaches, ambuscades, raids, the sack of towns and the devastaiiou-fif-the countryside. In all he bore a man's part. But .are we to label a man a ruffian because he fought back when his country was invaded, and because he fought with the only weapons open to him? Is he a savage because he was not an exponent of the ideals of the twentieth century conscientious objector and pacifist? As logically with Swift, cotjdemn Homer for his obvious ignorance .of the polity and doctrine of the Churcn of England.

His Times But "Wallace stands among. the supreme figures of Scottish history and the history of the British Empire, because he and he alone saved Scottish nationalism in a day when it was threatened with complete submergence. I suppose he is a ruffian because he was a patriot and a nationalist. Scotland had been presented with a nobility of Anglo-Norman origin. They had but lately come across the border to dominate' Scotland and form the bodyguard of Scottish royalty. They had no roots in the soil, although they owned by royal gift all the best of it. Most of them had fiefs in England as well. Later they were to become genuine patriots, and Bruce, one of them, was to complote the work Wallace had begun. At the moment they were cringing vassals of England. Edward 1. they were, prepared to acknowledge as overlord. When a dispute arose over the royal succession, the nobles to a man admitted the claim of Edward to be Lord Paramount of Scotland, with the right to nominate his vassal king of Scotland.

So John Balliol became King of Scotland as Edward's nominee. Balliol, greatly daring, entered into the first Scoto-Freneh alliance and defied his English master. Edward came north, subdued Scotland in a campaign that embittered the vanquished for centuries. The barbarities of the sack of Berwick and a hundred other atrocities, so far from bringing tho rank and file of Scotland to heel, created among tho lesser nobles and tho gentry and common folk a determination to free themselves from the English yoke in spite of the Anglo-phile nobility. The national feeling needed only a leader to direct it. And with tho need came the man. William Wallace, a country gentleman, became the acknowledged head of the national party, raised by his personal influence a strong army of patriots, drove the English out of Scotland, and raided all the north of England. His Work

He was appointed guardian of the kingdom of Scotland. Edward again marched north, and overwhelmed Wallace's army at Falkirk. The whole of Wallace's cavalry, tlie contribution of the nobles to his army, deserted to the enemy without striking a blow. It was 0110 of the foulest betrayals in history. If Lord Raglan is looking for villains he will find them in plenty here. Edward's amnesty definitely excluded Wallace, who was taken by the treachery of ono of the nobility, carried to London, and executed with the coldblooded barbarity that characterised the times. But he had lighted a candle of patriotism and sacrifice that was never to be put out. Under Robert Bruce, who himself had played an ignoble part in the days of Wallace, Scottish nationality asserted itself finally and decisively at Biinnockburn. Scotland remained a free country, and by its freedom established the principle on which the Empire was ultimately built as a union of free peoples. That was Wallace's gift to Scotland and to the British nation.

Andrew Lang, no gentle critic, writes thus of Wallace: "Ho was truly bravo, disinterested, indomitable. Alono among tho leaders he never turned his coat. He arises from obscurity like Jeanne d'Arc; like her ho is greatly victorious: like her he awakens a whole people; like her he is deserted and is unlawfully put to death." What on earth has come over us when such heroism and such service are smugly dubbed the mr\rks of a ruffian? Has love of freedom become a vice in the eyes of your modern pacifist, and is true patriotism tojiis lofty mind mere ruffianism and savagery?.