Happy Xmas...

It's that time of year that NORAD, the computer system that monitors north American aerospace and maritime safety turns its attention to something more serious. Apparently they have tracked Santa from 1955, not only by satellite, but also by fighter jet, which I'm sure makes him feel quite at ease in his sleigh in the sky. As their website says 'Santa always waves [at the planes], he loves to see the pilots'...

I can already see that he's stopped off here by looking under the tree, but wanted to see  how far he'd gone since then. This is how it looked a few minutes ago when he was in Portland:

See it for yourself here or, for those of you who'd like to, you can also call NORAD's Santa Tracking Station on 877 HI-NORAD from within the US or +1 (719) 556-5211. Seriously! 

Switzerland

Switzerland occupies a unique position in the history of the idea of peace. Officially politically neutral since the sixteenth century has meant that Switzerland has acquired a reputation for being a centre for peacemaking over the past two centuries. This is particularly true of Geneva, perhaps rivaled only y the Hague as a centre for promoting international law and concord, as it is home to many organisations dedicated to promoting peace or at least limiting the effects of war, most notably the Red Cross, successive Geneva Conferences or, more recently, the Geneva Accord (2003), and the modern laws of war, the Geneva Conventions. And, of course, being the home of the League of Nations it was superseded by the United Nations, which has kept the the League's Palais des Nations as its second-most important office after New York. 

Which is interesting, considering for several hundred years they provided the decisive edge in military conflicts as mercenary troops. The last remnant of the once deeply entrenched tradition of Swiss mercenaries is the Swiss Guards, the bodyguards to the pope. Although they're no doubt more familiar with small arms, they still carry halberds ceremonially, the weapons (along with pikes) that made Swiss troops so useful to those who employed them and so reviled to those who did not.

The reason why this has occurred to me is that I've been looking into where the Swiss fitted into treaty making in the sixteenth century today in which these tensions are evident. The Swiss Confederation occupied a fairly unique in early modern peace treaty practice. At certain points they were included in agreements between other rulers despite having played no part in negotiations for peace; most often, they were included as allies to the French king, although they were also included as being adherents of other principal negotiators. However, at other points articles in treaties made it clear that no signatory to the treaty could enter agreements with the Swiss to provide mercenary troops in order to increase the likelihood that the terms of peace would be kept. 

The effects of the reformation upon treaty making practice are also interesting as far as the Swiss are concerned as at certain points the entire confederacy or individual cantons were excluded (or excluded themselves from particular treaties) in religious grounds. The most notable occurrence of this was the 1598 treaty of Vervins, which was the last European agreement to be made under the protection of the Holy See and not involving Protestant powers. Protestant Geneva, never a part of the Confederacy but an ally of Bern in the  1536 perpetual peace, also provides an interesting example of the increasing confessionalisation of international politics. France intended on having the city included in Vervins. Although it was mentioned specifically by name in the treaty itself, this was made clear when the city asked Henri IV subsequently to clarify their position in the agreement. However, since Spanish monarchs and successive popes were unwilling to enter into any treaty involving Geneva and, since Clement VII's mediation depended upon the exclusion of Protestants, it is unlikely that this sentiment was shared. In this light, it's also interesting that article 56 of the Swiss Constitution still grants the individual cantons the right to negotiate certain treaties with foreign powers 'within the domain relevant to their competencies.'

I've managed to not have to use the printed calendars published in 1839 in any great depth but am glad to have found these online, thanks to the Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf. You can find all eight volumes by clicking on this link:  Amtliche Sammlung der älteren eidgenössischen Abschiede.

Sticking together...

An emblem from Giles Corrozet's 1540 Hecatomgraphie makes the connection between peace, amity, kinship and the need for unity in early modern Europe quite explicit. The rhyme explaining this emblem asks how much stronger must these qualities be in relations than they are between strangers?: "Si amytié se treuve es estrangers,/ De combien plus entre amys & parens/ Doibt elle avoir ses effectz apparens?/ Non pas fainctifz, desloyaulx ne legiers?" 

What follows is a retelling of the story of the death of Scylurus, the Scythain king, that is originally found in Plutarch's Moralia XXIX. On his deathbed he asked his eighty sons (!) to break bundles of arrows that were tied together; when they were unable to, the king drew the arrows out one by one and broke them easily, demonstrating that the only way of preserving their strength was by being joined together in concord. 

This is the same idea found in the ancient symbol of the fasces lictoriae,  the bundle of elm rods bound up with an axe which was symbol of the Roman Republic, although without the axe which suggested that the state reserved the right to punish wrongdoers to maintain this unity. The image has been used by many subsequently, most obviously in the imagery of Italian fascism which drew its very name from the fasces, but also quite often in American political imagery such as on the obverse of my favourite coin and good luck token the Mercury Dime as well as in the flags or arms of several American states.

It also appears in other contexts. A similar story appears in a legend of Ghengis Khan's ancestor Alan Ho'a, which can be read in the thirteenth-century Secret History of the Mongols. Similarly, it is a lesson taught by the sixteenth-century Japanese warlord Mori Motonari to his sons, an episode familiar, apparently, to all Japanese schoolchildren. 

An episode in Akira Kurosawa's 1985 film Ran inverts this story; one son calls the lesson stupid and does, in fact, break the bound arrows over his knee. In the Americas it is recorded as being part of the Great Law of the Iroquois Confederation, in which Hiawatha asked each tribal chief to contribute an arrow to a bundle to symbolise the unity of the general council of tribes. A bundle of bound arrows were to be left beside the sacred fire as a symbol of the unity of the tribes in one confederation. A recent (2010) $1 coin commemorates this, wrapping the five arrows of the five Iroquois tribes in Hiawatha's belt.

Other examples that I don't really have time to follow upon that use sticks not arrows: the story of Svatopluk, king of Moravia who lived between 830 and 894, and the twigs he presented to his sons before his death; the Bulgar account of Khan Kubrat doing the same thing upon his death bed, which has led to the Bulgarian coat of arms containing a bundle of sticks; lastly, possibly a Persian version from the Seljuk period (mid-eleventh century) although I can't find a specific reference to this.


A dreadful pun has just dawned upon me, which I'll use as the title of this post, that the symbol of the fasces is all about sticking together. 

Wings of Nike

Yesterday, with ten minutes to kill I pulled down Walter Benjamin’s Archive, a selection of artefacts and writings from his archive that I’d bought a few years ago and browse from time to time. I’d forgotten how interesting it was to see how his collecting/ archivist/ antiquarian(?) instincts were marshalled. On index files, scraps of paper and notebooks  there are pieces of criticism, like the one that follows, that nestle up against lists of his son’s developmental words and phrases (I intend to play the game Mr Quambusch with my own children one day if they’ll let me and put a poster of the brilliant little sketch Sleep my Sheepikin, Sleep on their wall before they have a say in the issue), postcards of whatever her found interesting (sibyls, architecture and “demotic” toys from Russia), the calculations of a restaurant bill (on the back of a small slip of paper with a question about whether the Marxist view that revolutions being the locomotive of history could, in fact, be put the other way around...)

            Looking at it again, I noticed several things that had slipped by me before – perhaps because I had nowhere to put them like I do now in this blog. The first was a sentence in the edited text, saying that one of the things that Benjamin collected in a notebook that hadn’t been included was a series of anecdotes about Immanuel Kant. I found myself wondering what these were and whether it’s possible to find them anywhere – something I’ll be following up at some point when I have time. The second was this draft of a critique he wrote some time in 1922 of Fritz von Unruh’s book Wings of Nike, which has sometimes been described as a "pacifist travelogue."
             Beyond the fact that I like Benjamin's writings in general, as well as the idea of a pacifist writer being named Unruh - Unrest in English translation - I’m not sure yet if or how it comes in useful for me, apart from having been thinking about interwar pacifism more than perhaps I should over the last few weeks. And, I must admit, I like the image of the peace flag being ‘tie-dyed’ with colours of both positive and negative connotations  - including the ‘drab brown of the roast turkey...’ (Incidentally, did they tie die things in the 1920s? I’d not really thought about it before, and assumed it was something that my own parents learned in the 1970s?)

               It's only a draft, which I think explains a little of the looseness. To me, it reads as though it's a bit hyperbolic. Although I’m sure Benjamin meant his criticism of Unruh's idealistic conceptions of pacifism to be meaningful one rather than simply point scoring, when I went looking for more about this piece, or about how Benjamin related to Kant’s pacifism, I couldn’t find very much. (Incidentally, it seems to me that the relationship between Kant and Benjamin probably warrants further study in the future.) What I did find was a suggestion in Walter Benjamin: Critical Lives (London: Reaktion, 2007, p.70) that this review was particularly savage – a polemic, as he said, aimed to devour the author’s ‘skin and bones’ - as he hoped that it would mark him out for great things as a political critic. The spelling retained in the Americanese and it stops in mid-sentence as if Benjamin was interrupted in his train of thought by something far more pressing. ...

Peace Commodity

            “Leafing through your volumes!”

From 1920 to 1923, in Rome, in Zurich, in Paris – in short, whatever place outside of German soil one might have happened to land upon – German products could be found for half the price that one would usually have paid for the same goods abroad, or indeed in Germany itself. Poorly assembled goods for an impoverished population who were no longer capable of normal consumption were thrown into the dumping ground of the inflation era, placed on the markets as “peace commodities” at bargain princess. Around that time, the barriers began to lift again and the traveling salesman set off on tour. One had to live on the clearance sales and the higher the dollar rose, the greater was the circulation of export goods. At the height of the catastrophe it included intellectual and cultural goods too. For, even if the financial benefit was smaller, turnover raised the prestige of the entrepreneur. The Kantian idea of eternal peace – long undeliverable in the spiritually bankrupt Germany – was right in the first ranks of those spiritual export articles. Uncheckable in its manufacture, a slow seller for the previous ten years, it was available for unbeatable prices. It was a heaven-sent opportunity to smooth the way for a far more serious export. No thought was given to the genuine quality of its peace. Immanuel Kant’s raw, homemade weave of thought had indeed proven itself to be highly durable, but it did not appeal to a broader public. It was necessary to take account of the modern taste of bourgeois democracy. The cloth of the peace flag was tie-dyed, its white threadbare weave brightly patterned and, given all the signs and symbols, it was difficult – this will be found to be corroborated – for the green of hope to stand out from the bellicose red of the lobster, the blue of faithfulness from the drab brown of the roast turkey. In such a form this renovated weave of a pacifism in all the colors of the world’s ways – which was sated in other ways too – was to be unveiled before the international public. And just as one expects that the simplest apprentice can throw out, fold, and prepare the bales of cloth according to the rules, so too the gentleman who markets this gaily colored pile, for good or for evil, has to drape himself in the colors of the universe and in front of the customers nose the world of God which he sells in pieces. All that was necessary was to find the traveling salesman who also had at his immediate disposal the required vim of gesticulation, such as has the journalist with his triply loosened wrist and pen. That the reserve lieutenant was formerly perceived as a traveling salesman is well known. He was easily imported into “better circles.” This is also thoroughly true of Mr von Unruh, who, in 1922, as a traveling salesman going from city to city for eternal peace, processed the Paris position. Of course – and this was accordingly so apt that Mr von Unruh himself bridled at moments – his import into French circles some years ago at Verdun did not occur without furore, nor without commotion, not without the spilling of blood. Be that as it may, the report that he presents Wings of Nike: The Book of a Journey – implies that his contact with his customer base has persisted, even when he presented for inspection peace commodities rather than heavy munitions. It is not equally as certain whether it can be assured that the publication of this travel journal – a list of his customers and done deals – is of use to the broader course of business. For barely had it occurred before the commodity began to be returned from Paris.

            In any case it is extremely instructive to examine Mr von Unruh’s pacifism more closely. Since the supposed convergence of the moral idea and that of right, on whose presupposition the European proof of the Kantian gospel of peace rested, began to disconnect in the mind of the nineteenth century, German “peace” has pointed more to metaphysics as the place of its foundation. The German image of peace emanates from metaphysics. In contast to this it has long been observed that the idea of peace in West European democracies is a thoroughly worldly, political, and, in the final instance, juristically justifaible one. Pax is for them the ideal of international law. To this corresponds, in practical terms, the instrument of the arbitration court and its treaties. The great moral conflict of an unlimited and reinforced right to peace with an equitable peace, the diverse ways in which this theme has been instrumentalized in the course of history, are not up for discussion in Mr von Unruh’s pacifism, just as indeed the world-historical events of this hour remain unaddressed. And “in terms of the philosophical politics of France” – Florens Christian Rang analyzed them for the Germans (in his final work German Shelters, the most truthful critique of war and post-war literature and one of the greatest political works ever, and of which out of the entire German press only the Frankfurter Zeitung took any note in any sort of adequate fashion): its rigor matched by its humanity, its precision detracting not in the least from its depth – here, thought, “philosophical politics” fuses in Unruh’s pathos with idealistic waffle. “Tout l’action de l’esprit des aisée si elle n’est plus coumise au réel” [All action of the spirit is easy if it is not subjugated to the real] – that is how Proust phrases the old truth. Mt Unruh has heroically wrestled himself free from reality. In any case, the great formal dinners are the only international facts that his new pacifism takes into account. His new  international is hatched in the peace of the communal digestion and the gala menu is the magna carta of the future peace of nations. And just as a cocky sidekick might smash available vessel at a love feast, so the thin terminology of the Königsberger philosopher [Kant] dispatches to the devil with the kick of a jackboot and what remains is the innerness of the heavenly eye in its attractive alcoholic glassiness. The image of the gifted blabbermouth with a teary look, as Shakespeare alone could capture! – The  great prose of all evangelists of peace spoke of war. To stress ones own love of peace is always the close concern of those who have instigated war. But he who wants peace should speak of war. He should speak of the past one (is he not called Fritz von Unruh,  the one thing about which he would remain silent), and above all, he should speak of the coming one. He should speak of its threatening plotters, its powerful causes, its terrifying means. And  yet this would be perhaps the only discourse against which the salons, which allowed Mr von Unruh entry, remain completely hermetically sealed? The much pleaded peace, which is already in existence, proves, when seen by daylight, to be the one – the only “eternal” known to us -  which those enjoy who have commanded in war and who wish to set the tone at the peace party. For this is what Mr von Unruh has become too.  “Woe” his Cassandra-like gobbledegook clamours over all who have realized at the correct moment - that is roughly between the fish and the roast – that “inner conversion” is the only acceptable revolt and that...’ 

War Artists...

I watched a documentary this evening presented by John Snow about the representation of war in British art. Well worth a watch, especially for the paintings done by Stanley Spencer at the Sandham Memorial Chapel in Burghclere, Hampshire. When he painted these murals, he drew upon what he had seen during his service in World War One. However, they're not about the brutality of war in a blood and guts sense. Rather, many of these vignettes seem moving in a gentle and intimate way, whilst also saying a great deal about the underlying psychological horrors of war. Below is an image that Snow showed in the documentary, in which a once-vigorous soldier who has to stand hidden in his blankets on a hot water bottle while his sheets are changed. 

As a pacifist, Spencer had agonised over whether to sign up or not; the service he saw in the Ambulance Corps in Macedonia disturbed him immensely and, after the war, he spent several months recuperating in a hospital, where presumably these images are drawn from. If you can't play the John Snow film on the Channel 4 website, there's a short film on youtube on the Sandham chapel, which gives a sense of the work. It reminded me of a book I've been meaning to read more than a few chapters of at some point, Forgotten Lunatics of the Great War by Peter Barham, which shows how the psychiatric casualties of war were dealt with in the early days of psychiatry, of which there's a comprehensive review here. 

As I like drawing connections between depictions of war and peace in music and songs, Spencer's paintings that he did in World War Two of Glaswegian workers on the home front, working in the shipyards of the Clyde, also appeared on the 7" cover of Robert Wyatt's version of Elvis Costello's anti-war song Shipbuilding. 

Over the weekend I saw several great pieces of art that also grapple with the subject of war and peace. The most impressive of these were Fiona Banner's decommissioned fighter planes now on show at the Tate Britain. Both are jets that have seen service used in military conflicts over the last twenty years. The surface of the Jaguar has been polished so as you move about it you see you reflection morphs and bend with the constantly changing contours. It's almost as if your own organic humanity is being challenged and shaped by the inorganic lines of a lethal military machine. This setting makes it unquestionably beautiful simply as an object, let alone powerful as a work of art.

The second plane is a Sea Harrier which crash landed in 2000. Its surface has been brushed in patterns that mimic feathers, a play on its name. But it also seems to me that this is also a play on the fact that humans wage war by supplementing flesh and blood with machines. This is driven home by the small window for the pilot to see out of is hung just above head-height, so you can see this tiny space from which this massive plane was controlled.  I imagine that Jeremy Deller's Baghdad, 5 MArch 2007 bombed car at the Imperial War Museum would be an interesting companion piece to these, although I couldn't make it south of the river this time around. 

Banner's planes aren't the only pieces currently on display that deal with war. I usually dislike the the Turner Prize immensely and, despite some suggestions that it's a weak show from some art critics, I enjoyed it far more than usual. I particularly liked Dexter Dalwood's beautiful paintings, including one about about Greenham Common. It seems to evoke all of the images I can remember from my childhood about the women's  protests there in one painting. Obsessed with history, absent of figures, as are all his paintings, instead it suggests the barbed wire fences, green fields and the idea that seemed omnipresent in the mid-eighties - that it was almost inevitable that nuclear war would transform a map of Europe into a series of overlapping concentric fallout zones. There is, though, a suggestion of a hand, reaching out of the wire fences as the women's hands reached out to each other forming a circle around the perimeter of Greenham in 1982. An impressive-looking resource I've just stumbled across in writing this piece on the protests and the protesters can be found at http://www.yourgreenham.co.uk/

Ganymede...

A medal of pope Paul III from 1549, the year in which he died, which was produced to commemorate the donation of Parma and Piacenza to his son, Pier Luigi Farnese. Interesting that there is some suggestion that the obverse depicts Zeus as an eagle and Ganymede, who pours an amphora of water upon a lily, the symbol of the Farnese family. The legend says, in Greek, "The Peace of Zeus Pours Well."

The subject of Zeus and Ganymede is an interesting choice for a commemorative medal in the renaissance as it is loaded with homosexual overtones. Ganymede was a Trojan prince whose beauty was so great that he was abducted to serve as the gods' cup bearer and, in many sources, as Zeus' male lover. 

Having said that, Robert Baldwin - who has worked on depictions of rape in early modern Europe - has suggested that Ganymede and Europa were actually reasonably common symbols of  Roman military triumphs that was adapted in the renaissance, and in the Christian tradition it was an allegory for the rapture of the human soul by divine love. Indeed, Alciato used it as an illustration of the adage Joy is Found in God in the first edition of his book of emblems. 

Helmets, Bees, Phallus, Don Henley...

These are not the only examples of helmets being used as symbols in Goetz's medals or the most striking. For instance, the most arresting design includes an assault helmet atop an erect penis to which a German maiden, Lorelei is chained, a bastard child and a broken lyre at her feet. But they are the images that reminded me the most of this image taken from Andrea Alciato's book of emblems published in  Augsburg in 1531.

This woodcut illustrated the proverb Ex bello pax or Out of war comes Peace. The explanation of this suggested it be read in this way: "See here a helmet which a fearless soldier previously wore and which was often spattered with enemy blood. After peace was won, it retired to be used as a narrow hive for bees; it holds honey-combs and nice honey. - Let weapons lie far off; let it be right to embark on war only when you cannot in any other way enjoy the art of peace." Of course, a complete reversal of the sentiments of the twentieth century German examples above.

This sentiment seems to have originated with Alciato's emblem but it does recall many earlier precedents. One from the Bible that has turned up everywhere from Virgil (Georgics Book I) to Michael Jackson (Heal the World) is the idea of military weapons being turned to different purposes in Isaiah 2:4 or Micah 4:3 - "They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore."Similarly, it runs through classical literature with the spider being the most common occupant of old armour or weapons. 'In iron-bound shields are the looms of busy spiders' is a phrase of Bacchylides quoted by Plutarch (Numa 20); Euripides has a spear covered in cobwebs in Erectheus V. It's also found in Sophocles, Theocritus and, as mentioned in Roman literature in Virgil as well as Ovid (Fasti I.) Here, it is interesting to note a difference betwen Greek and Roman imagery, as suggested by James Hutton, that the Greek tradition uses the spider, whereas the Roman tradition uses the idea of ploughshares, and that these are combined only in the renaissance (Themes of Peace in Renaissance Poetry, 283.)

Slightly off-track: here's the image of Lorelei chained to the phallus:

I'm not just including this because I may have no opportunity to do so in the future, but also to illustrate certain a point. The image at first seemed to me to be quite ridiculous but the underlying sentiment is really quite disturbing. Goetz was commenting upon the use of black colonial French troops in the Rhineland and their alleged rape of German women. Why I'm including it here is that it occurred to me that some elements of the symbolism in this piece are also drawn straight from the renaissance emblem book. Here's Alciato once more, this time on discord.

This was used as an allegory for the peace of Italy in the 1531 edition. In subsequent ones it was titled Foedera, meaning a contract, agreement or treaty. The one broken string suggested, said Alciato's commentary, that "It is difficult, except for a man of skill, to tune so many strings, and if one string is out of tune or broken, which so easily happens, all the music of the instrument is lost and its lovely song disjointed. In like manner the leaders of Italy are now forming alliances.There is nothing for you to fear if affection lasts for you and stays in concord. But if any one should slide away, which we often see, that harmony is all dissolved into nothing." While we're on the subject, this sentiment has also recently topped the UK charts in a song by James Morrison featuring Nelly Furtado titled Broken Strings. When I first heard it I thought it was interesting that this imagery that I'd been reading about was still cropping up in pop music four centuries later, especially music with lines that have an audible clunk to them such as  When I love you,/ It's so untrue...

I'm not going to include a link to that because it drives me nuts enough as it is, as it seems to get played almost every time I step into a public space. It's easy enough to track down if you feel like subjecting yourself to it. Why Don Henley in the title of this post? Well, if anyone's interested in a slice of musical masochism, here is a link to the song about Ronald Reagan by Bruce Hornsby,  The End of Innocence, which Henley recorded in 1989.  There's a fair few of the standard images/ tropes of the eighties music video used here: a couple rolling around in grassy fields; saxophone solo; nostalgia for the fifties; Henley doing what musicians seemed to do in clips all the time thirty years ago, namely standing in a field wearing a trench coat. But when he sings  "they're beating ploughshares into swords, for the tired old man who we elected king"  it reminds me - as it did when I saw Goetz's medals -  that certain symbols seem to persist in many different contexts, that they can be deployed to say radically different things and that once you're aware of them  you find them in very odd places.

Once again, you can find a catalogue of Goetz's work here and can explore Glasgow University's excellent digital version of Alciato's Emblematum liber with a click here or the other excellent site here at MUN in which many editions are cross-referenced here.

NAHC 

Smite Him Dead! The Day of Justice Will not Ask your Reasons!

Another beautiful representation of a treaty, this time on a bronze medal struck in Germany in 1915 designed by Karl Goetz from the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum. It's an allegorical depiction of the Pact of London of 1915, in which Italy left the Triple Alliance (with Germany and Austro-Hungary being the other members) and joined the Triple Entente (France, Russia and Britain.)

It depicts a chimera-like creature, with several heads representing the allies of the Triple Entente: a cockerel and a bear representing France and Russia, two lions representing Britain and Belgium, a dragon representing Japan and the snake for Serbia. Italy is represented by the small boy suckling at its teats below. The legend reads PACT OF MALICE. 

The obverse shows god in judgement, surveying flames on earth below. The inscription is a quotation from the German writer Heinrich von Kleist's Germania an ihre Kinder: "Strike him dead! The Day of Judgement will not ask your reasons!"

See it at the V&A site here. There's a link to a site that catalogues the work of Goetz above, which is really worth a look as this medal is only one of several connected to particular treaties or truces. You can read von Kleist's poem here. Brace yourself, it's hardly a barrel of laughs. As you'd expect, really, from a German writing in 1811 at the height of the Napoleonic Wars who shot himself later that year...

Treaty of Madrid 1526

Another beautiful visual depiction of an early modern peace treaty this time to illustrate for  the Treaty of Madrid in 1526. This treaty was coerced from Francis I during his "Spanish Captivity" after he was taken prisoner at the Battle of PAvia in 1525. Immediately upon his release he renounced its terms - as he had done in private to his own councillors before swearing to its terms.

The cover depicts the imperial and French arms (above); the second page shows a stylised meeting of the two sovereigns. One interpretation that comes to mind immediately could be that it shows the emperor on the left, offering his hand to Francis, who simply looks at it, unwilling to be reconciled. I'll have to think on the matter more. It could be, after all, a woodcut the printer had that seemed appropriate to be reused to illustrate the text of the treaty.

Follow this link for full access to this pamphlet at the Bayerische StaatsBibliothek.

AMERICAN VISITOR FOUND ENGLISH BENT ON PEACE...

Doing some research the other day on F.W. Norwood I came across this article from the New York Times of October 1922. I've cut out a few paragraphs about Jefferson's opinion of the church in England, so if that interests you here's a link. What I find interesting about this article - and with the article I last published - is how similar the rhetoric is to the tradition of European peace orations that stretches back to the renaissance. Particularly surprising in this instance was the reference to "The Turk"trampling Europeans unresisted and burning Smyrna. This event ended several years of war between Greece and Turkey in September 1922, only a month before this interview was published. 

It was certainly topical, but it also drew upon much older ideas. For instance, I'm reading a few orations from the mid-sixteenth century by French humanists who refer to very similar issues in reference to the east, the need for Christians to behave in a way that their faith suggests and the benefits or limits of pacifism. I'll put those texts and my conclusions up here when I'm done. 

Apart from that, I think it's a interesting period piece about American perceptions of inter-war Britain. A brief biography on Jefferson can be found here, and here's a link to Jefferson's original sermons on peace. 

AMERICAN VISITOR FOUND ENGLISH BENT ON PEACE

29 October 1922.

THE Rev. Dr. Charles E. Jefferson is attracting congregations on Sunday evening to the Broadway Tabernacle, Fifty-sixth Street and Broadway, with stories of his recent visit to England in an exchange of pulpits with the Rev. Dr. F.W. Norwood of the City Temple, London, and as preacher in other leading British Free Churches.

“I went to see the things that were lovely and of good report,” he said, “and that is what I saw,” Dr. Jefferson added that he liked England because it is a land where people are well bred; he liked London because it is old and quiet; the British “bobbies” because they are policemen who never lose their tempers; the crowds because they are orderly and good natured; the quaint old-time names of the London streets – the Poultry Cheapside, Shoe Lane and Plumtree Court – the devotion and attention and punctuality of British congregations and their fervent singing, and the affection displayed by the people for their King and Queen and the Prince and Princess of Wales. Altogether, he confessed that he had a visit charming in every way.

            “Great Britain and America must be friends,” said Dr. Jefferson, “Without co-operation they cannot take action or any definite policy; united they can. For example, together they could help France or Italy or Russia do the right thing. A useful work is done in that direction be the interchange of preachers, politicians, journalists, bankers and business men.”

            Dr. Jefferson saw Lloyd George at a luncheon and came to the conclusion that he possessed the four qualifications required for a war against war – knowledge, experience, conviction and religion.

            “My! the English are interested in politics!” he exclaimed, smiling at the rememberance. “They are very much alive. They have suffered by the late war and are in no mood for another. The politicians know this and will go very carefully for some time.

            “The people are more interested in the question of the church’s views about war than they are here. Ministers declare that the churches must take a stand. They are going in the direction of the extreme pacifist position, but I do not know that they would go all the way if you pinned them to a concrete case.

            “There is no common understanding among Christians as to what is the Christian attitude on war. Some think that it not the Christian thing to let the Turk trample on us and burn Smyrna. They wonder whether it is not the Christian thing to kill him. The same people who took part in the ‘No More War’ procession in London would, I imagine, adopt that view if they had to decide one way or the other.

            “The tragedy is that we Christians get together and enunciate Christian principles, but at that the same time the men who direct policy – the rulers, the politicians and journalists – are busy planning another course, and when war comes the churches are swept into it.”

            Changing the subject, Dr. Jefferson said:

“Many British homes are surrounded by gardens and the gardens by hedges. The Britisher retires to his home and his garden and builds up a hedge of reserve about himself. He is a good fellow when you get to know him, but it takes time to do that.

            “On my two previous visits to Britain I went as a tourist, and I never learned much about the true Britain. This time the hedges were down and I was admitted to intimacies hitherto unrealized. Everywhere I was received with the greatest courtesy. The first English home offered to me was an Anglican home. That pleased me very much. Attempts were made to obtain an Anglican pulpit for me in which I might preach, and I would like to have done so, but my program had been fully arranged. On epulpit was offered, but a precious engagement prevented my acceptance….

            Newpapers and newspaper men next came up for consideration.

            “I think the English newspapers are fine, and are served by able men,” he said. “The editorial pages were a delight to me. I noticed there was a much more friendly attitude to Americans than ten years ago.

            “There is much more news of Europe in American papers than of America in British papers. I wish that news about the worst side of American life was not cabled across to the extent that it is. Such news must give English men quite the wring impression of America. For the first two weeks I felt ashamed to hold my head up as an American in view of what was being recorded in the papers at the time. I do not see why the underworld of New York should be raked up. Every city has its underworld.

            “There are more murders and divorce cases in British papers than there used to be, and newspaper men themselves do not think that the papers are so good as ten years ago. Journalists can do much better to foster friendly relations between the two English-speaking countries, and the interchange of journalists is contributing toward this end.’    

"...you hear of a death-ray which they have invented in France..."

This from The Guardian, 9 October 1934: 

FLEET STREET MONDAY

Mr. Lloyd George, speaking to-night at the City Temple, where a large gathering welcomed Dr. F.W. Norwood home after his world tour, made a forceful plea for the Churches to unite in the cause of peace.

            Mr. Lloyd George said that he came from a country which owed more to its preachers than it did to its warriors or to its statesmen. It owed everything to them. He was told that there was now a falling-off in attendances at place of worship, but there never was a time when the great preacher did not have his audience.

            I was specially attracted to Dr. Norwood, Mr. Lloyd George continued, but the fact that no man has devoted more time and energy to the preaching of the gospel of peace.” Peace was the message for to-day, just the same as it was nearly twenty centuries ago. He referred to the recent speech in which Mussolini foreshadowed the training of Italian children from the age of seven years upwards in the use of arms. “If that policy is to be followed by every statesman in the world,” he said, “you will have a scroll on the walls of every school in the world, ‘Little children, kill one another.’“

            Nor was Italy the only country.

“You hear of a new poison gas invented in America, you hear of a death-ray which they have discovered in France, you have a conference at Bristol which passes unanimously a resolution in favour of increasing armaments. That is the world to-day. It is a jungle, and the nations are prowling through it, snarling at each other, baring their teeth at each other. At any moment a mistaken gesture or a misunderstood oration and they may spring again at each other’s throats. We want as many preachers of peace as we can collect. They are preparing guns and bombers. Let us mobilise the forces of peace.”

            In the last war the most striking thing had not been the carnage but the absolute indifference with which it was regarded, the acquiescence of the most highly civilised nations in Christendom. “It is a savage race, the race of mankind,” he said, “when it is roused.” War had to be stopped long before it began, and though, in his judgement, there was no immediate prospect of war, nevertheless there was only just enough time to stop it.

            “Who can do so? I think nobody except the Christian churches. Everybody else seems to me to be working for more armaments.” 

Frederick William Norwood was a Baptist minister originally from Melbourne. He was made the pastor of the City Temple church in London in 1919. The tour mentioned in this article took him all through the Commonwealth and America, delivering lectures on the subject of peace -  although he also gave a lecture titled A Frank Talk on Sex and the Cities, which I think had little to do with inspiring the much more recent TV series, which would no doubt have had much to say to an early twentieth-century Methodist minister...

In the year following the publication of this article, Norwood celebrated when he heard that Germany was rearming the Rhineland. This may seem odd at first,  considering his long-held and vociferous pacifist stance. However, it is understandable considering that he thought German objections to Versailles were justifiable as there could be no fair peace whilst it was shackled to unfair terms of peace. This he hoped signified the beginnings of an atmosphere in which a lasting peace could be negotiated. 

The City Temple, which was near the Holborn Viaduct, was destroyed in the Blitz in 1941. Norwood ended up accepting posts in the Baptist church in Canada and the United States.

For Foes asleepe, (they say) the Devil Rocks...

A few pages from Henry Peacham's book of emblems Minerva Britannia published in 1612. Although this doesn't contain as man explicit references to treaties as earlier emblem books such as Alciato's Emblematta, it does have several references to peace that are quite interesting. The first one I've included, Sic bellica virtus,  expounds on martial virtue, the essence of which is being prepared even at times of peace. Seeing as the book was dedicated to Henry, Prince of Wales, who disagreed with his father on military matters, it seems appropriate that it speaks of those 'Who not of Fathers Actes ambitious are, But of the brave Atchivements of their owne...'

Henry was depicted as a martial prince elsewhere in the volume, in full armour mounted upon a horse. The legend beneath threatened, as did his father's work the Basilikon Doron had earlier, 'That whether Turke, Spaine, France, Or Italie,/ The Red-Shanke, or the Irish Rebell bold,/ Shall rouze thee up, thy Trophees may be more,/ Than all the Henries Ever Liv'd before.' Of course, he was to die before taking the throne, leaving his brother Charles to inherit his titles.

Prince Charles was depicted by Peacham as in the mould of his father, a peacemaker. This is how Peacham depicted the king, with the motto Sic pacem habemus, referring to his unification of previous warring states of England and Scotland. Although he recommended that the united lions should try their might upon a shared enemy, it's notable that James I had actually brought the Anglo-Spanish War to an end in 1604.

What strikes me about this emblem, which is about how peace stems from unity, is how closely it corresponds so closely to several other emblems in the same volume. First, another dedicated explicitly to James: Ex utroque Immortalis.

The second is about the value of friendship - Vicinorum amicitia. 

These values are often entwined not only in emblem literature, but also in earlier forerunners to the genre like Erasmus in his Adages.  I'll certainly write more on both subjects in the future as they come up in my reading and research. 

See the site Middlebury Minerva for scans and some basic commentaries on Peacham's Minerva Britannica. It's the kind of site that there should be more of, as it was put together in 2001 by a first-year university course on emblem literature run by Professor Timothy Billings at Middlebury College, Vermont. It shows that it's possible for scholars even on the bottom rung of the academic ladder are already able to contribute to a wider corpus of scholarship, not only by making resources available, but by offering some reasonably astute commentary.

NAHC

Treaty of Crépy 1544

An allegorical print of the treaty of Crépy from the collection of the British Museum. This agreement, signed on the 20th September 1544, was between the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and Francis I, King of France. The treaty itself is in Dumont (IV-2, pp.279ff) and can often be found referred to as the treaty of Crépy-en-Laonnois or as Crespy. I'll try to post a link to a summary of its terms later or write one myself as I can't find one right now. For now, I'll just say that I find this interesting as, unlike several other treaties of the period, Crépy was not commemorated very much in print in France, probably because - as this suggests - its terms were incredibly divisive, particularly as it gave a right to the younger son of Francis, Charles, duc d'Orleans, to either Milan or Burgundy. His elder son, Henry (the future Henry II), repudiated it straight away. The imperial eagle grips the French cockerel in its right claw, making it vomit out several Fleur-de-Lys. Is this a reference to this division, or is it to the fortresses that the treaty tranferred to imperial control? I'm not sure on first reflection...

NAHC

Shabtai Rosenne

Obituaries for Shabtai Rosenne, one of the foremost scholars of international law, whose areas of expertise were the World Court, the Law of the Sea and International Treaty Law.

An obituary from the The Guardian today, where there is also an article by Maurice Mendelson titled My Legal Hero. At the blog Peace Palace Library. Even better is the obituary on the blog of the European Journal of International Law here.

Finally, a link to his 1970 book on the Vienna Convention The Law of Treaties.

Dumont's CUD...

When I first started writing about  treaties I had a huge amount of trouble accessing many of the standard compilations that are the most useful sources for peace treaties. Only a few years later and there really are a wealth of sources on the web where full works have been digitized and are available for download in multiple formats at only the touch of a button.

Take Jean Dumont’s work Corps Universel Diplomatique du Droit des Gens, (CUD) which is pretty much the first work that gets turned to for the texts of treaties from Charlemagne to the late 17th century. When I first started needing this work I was put off looking at it on microfiche, perhaps the most awkward and least satisfying type of way to look at a historical source. Over the last few years, when I’ve really had to spend much more time with several volumes I’ve seen that look in librarians’ eyes that I read as questioning whether I really need to call up all those large volumes so often and keep them on the reserve shelves for so long.

To be honest, I’ve not felt too bad about doing this: not only did I need to do this, but they’re really the kind of work that should be on open access given that they’re the most authoritative compilation of pre-modern European treaties and are cited so often in any work you could poke a stick at by historians, political scientists and any others interested in the development of international law. Anyway, it seems as though the web has made these kind of problems a thing of the past as I’ve now got all the volumes and supplements of the CUD  sitting in a single folder. 

In some ways, it’s a shame, as I love the books themselves as objects – the smell, the feel of the rough paper, and the element of chance, of opening it up to a page at random and finding some gem I couldn’t find by design. However, these are small things in comparison to the benefits of having it scanned and digitized. Even better, it’s format-friendly. In the online viewing options as well as being available in colour or black and white PDFs, they’re also available in several e-reader friendly formats. There is also a Full Text version. Of course, these are a minefield in terms of typographical errors, which are so commonplace that they’re hardly worth using – except, perhaps, to search for certain terms to see how concepts are repeated (or not) in different periods.

So much academic work is remaining to be done in this area, not only on treaties themselves, but also on Dumont and how he fits in to the wider impulse towards compiling volumes of treaties in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. So at some stage I’ll try to put together something on those themes. Until then, there’s quite enough to be getting on in these volumes already.

Thanks to the John Adams library at the Boston Public Library for digitizing these books and making them available through the Internet Archive. You can access them here: Corps Universel Diplomatique.