WINTER AND WAR

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 60, Issue 4235, 24 January 1940, Page 4

WINTER AND WAR

LOOKING BACK THROUGH HISTORY..

The poets most frequently quoted belong to the Northern Hemisphere, and their references to winter dwell largely on its sternness. It is described as ruler of the inverted year. The poor man prayed that Its long protracted rigour might cease. It was the season for vapours, clouds and storms and the wild frolics of Boreas. It is therefore not to be wondered at that it should make itself felt particularly when wars are rife. Winter quarters were not familiar, and something not unlike the practice prevails to-day. Although authorities deny that the winter snow was the prime cause of Napoleon’s defeat at Moscow, it is admitted that the French army fell back amidst the horrors of a Russian winter-, and out of 400,000 combatants in the grand army only a few thousand recrossed the Niemen in December. The winter rains on the present Western Front have practically determined military operations and exercised a vital influence in the campaign. The escape of the Deutschland after its attack upon the Rawalpindi was aided by tumultuous seas and poor visibility. A change of wind prevented reinforcements from reaching King William in time for the Battle of Senlac, and possibly served to shape the .whole future of England. A shower the night before Waterloo led Napoleon to delay giving battle, and although it was then summer the forces of Nature insisted on taking a part in the conflict. Winter parted the armies of England and Ireland in 1689, and provided a six months’ interval, which ended in the Battle of the Boyne.

The tanks with which we are now so familiar were invented to surmount barbed wire defences and deploy machine guns, but rain has on many occasions been the cause of their being bogged in the mud. The Germans in the last war were so impressed by the'failure of the new invention that they regarded tanks as useless. In spite of recent improvements in implements of war, the rain and mud still have a great say not far from the Maginot Line. Winter is a factor not to be despised. In the Crimean War the Allies suffered unspeakable hardships from the rigour of the winter, accentuated by the breakdown of the system for providing the army with food, clothing and other necessaries. It needs little imagination to convince one that winter, however impartial in its operations, insists on contributing to the final issue.

Consideration of the subject leads thoughtful people to widen the field of vision. It is not long till we learn that human affairs are conditioned by factors beyond human control. Napoleon and Bismarck are quoted in support of this dictum, but no proof is needed for what is writ so large on the broad page of history. We speak lightly of chance and luck and fate, and what we really mean by 'such terms is that there are mighty forces not under the sway of man—wind, snow and rain and even the state of the sky are included in the list of the uncontrollables. ’The story goes that at the Glasgow Broomielaw a notice was once exhibited to the effect that a certain steamer would sail for a West Highland port "on Tuesday, wid and peather permitting, and on Wednesday whether or no.” It is on record when the boat sailed, but the latter part of the announcement showed some courage. What some people call luck, or chance, or fate, others, and ' a very large number they are, prefer explicitly to speak of as Providence. Some who use the ■ single syllable terms may have at the back of their minds a vague feeling of something more than blind fat, but when the term “Providence” is used the element of personality is brought into issue. The trouble is that the supposed intervention of Providence often seems to favour crime, stupidity and selfishness. This makes it difficult for simple faith to keep a footing. Events appear to be a matter of accident leading to a vast amount of perplexity. We try to get out of the difficulty by concluding that the whole business is a mystery. .People who arrive at this critical juncture in

their thinking are of two classes. The first are those who declare themselves resolved to believe in Providence, and await the solution of the mystery when they are more capable of understanding It. The second

group impatiently refuses to give any further serious attention to the subject. That has often been called cowardice, or a counsel of despair; and. though it is not always so, it is a

hasty and ill-considered conclusion. Those who take up the position that nothing can be known about an over-ruling power should seriously face the fact that the issue demands years of reading and thinking. Why spend years on developing only minutes in developing Why subscribe to the doctrines of Democritus, who lived about 460 8.C.? "He believed strictly in secondary or physical causes, but not in a primary immaterial cause." In other words, he regarded chance as the foundation of everything. Reason itself is, on this theory, the child of chance, and while things seem to be ordered by intelligence they are purely accidental. That is what his doctrine implies, and it seems to follow that science is merely engaged in studying hallucinations. The scientist is only himself an accident, knowing himself to be so, and merely amusing himself with phenomena. Most thoughtful people prefer to accept the tremendous and fascinating mystery, but do not stop there. The human race has faith in something greater than itself, something not entirely unlike itself, but so immensely great as to defy complete comprehension. Our knowledge is imperfect, but adequate. We do not require to know the higher mathematics in order to earn a living; we find it suffices to be familiar with certain simple rules of arithmetic. An overruling Providence does not imply that every storm shall help the believer. The rain falls on the evil as well as the good, and the sun shines alike on the wicked and the righteous. Providence, rightly understood, means foresight so perfect and so powerful as to make all things, even winter storms, minister to the final triumph and vindication of righteousness. How it can be done we know not, any more than the flies on the dome of St. Paul’s understand how Wren buillt that magnificent structure.