Deliver Us From Evil

During this season of remembrance, I've been re-reading Alistair Horne's superb book, The Price of Glory, a study of the battle of Verdun in 1916. It makes sobering reading. Like two stags locked in combat, the armies of Germany and France fought themselves to a standstill. The Germans, under the overall command of the dithering General Erich von Falkenheyn, attempted to bleed the French dry at Verdun. In one sense they succeeded, since the successful defence of 1916 was followed by the mutinies of 1917. Virtually every French settlement, large or small, was affected by Verdun. A generation of young Frenchmen was wiped out by their leaders' defence a outrance, the single-minded determination not to cede an inch of land or, having done so, to reclaim it as soon as possible. To this day, the names of some of the key features of the battle - Douaumont, Le Morte Homme, or Cote 304 - send shivers down the spine of France. Indeed, neither side 'won' at Verdun. It was, as Horne says, "an indecisive battle in an indecisive war." By the end of 1916, Germany had suffered a third of a million casualties and captured only a pathetically small strip of land. France lost a similar number, though no one will ever know for sure. Churchill put the French casualties as high as 469,000.

What struck me, 'though, was a metaphysical reflection (p.242-243). It seems completely out of place among the realism of harsh statistics. Horne writes about a common understanding, at the time, that events were being manipulated by evil.

In the last days of peace, there had seemed a point where the collective will of Eurpoe's leaders had abdicated and was usurped by some evil, superhuman Will from Stygian regions that wrested control out of their feeble hands. Seized by this terrible force, nations were swept along at ever-mounting speed towards the abyss.

I don't think that Horne is suggesting that responsibility for the mistakes of the war can somehow be transfered to a malevolent spirit; he is clear about the culpability of leaders. Nevertheless, he acknowledges the existence of evil. There is something for us, here. Perhaps in our post-modern sophistication, we have become blind to the shadows that stalk our world. We watch Twin Towers fall, and we are too clever, or too afraid, to call evil by its name.