Here are some thoughts of St. Thomas Aquinas that have particular resonance this Armistice (or Remembrance) Day, touching on who first deserves our love and loyalty:
... [W]e ought out of charity to love those who are more closely united to us more, both because our love for them is more intense, and because there are more reasons for loving them. Now intensity of love arises from the union of lover and beloved: and therefore we should measure the love of different persons according to the different kinds of union, so that a man is more loved in matters touching that particular union in respect of which he is loved. And, again, in comparing love to love we should compare one union with another. Accordingly we must say that friendship among blood relations is based upon their connection by natural origin, the friendship of fellow-citizens on their civic fellowship, and the friendship of those who are fighting side by side on the comradeship of battle. Wherefore in matters pertaining to nature we should love our kindred most, in matters concerning relations between citizens, we should prefer our fellow-citizens, and on the battlefield our fellow-soldiers. Hence the Philosopher says (Ethic. ix, 2) that "it is our duty to render to each class of people such respect as is natural and appropriate. This is in fact the principle upon which we seem to act, for we invite our relations to a wedding . . . It would seem to be a special duty to afford our parents the means of living . . . and to honor them."
The same applies to other kinds of friendship.
If however we compare union with union, it is evident that the union arising from natural origin is prior to, and more stable than, all others, because it is something affecting the very substance, whereas other unions supervene and may cease altogether. Therefore the friendship of kindred is more stable, while other friendships may be stronger in respect of that which is proper to each of them.
St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae IIae II, Q. 26, Art. 7
There are two men whom I remember in particular today. Both risked their lives with other Canadians (and other Scots) to help stop German atrocities in Europe.
The kilted man in the photograph, furious over the Rape of Belgium (which was not a myth: historians say those horrible things did indeed happen to Belgian women), left behind his wife and four children. He returned and fathered a fifth child, the youngest of my great-aunts.
The little boy sitting here on a stool grew up and left behind his new bride, first to guard the coast of British Columbia and then to shoot down the Luftwaffe. Nine people exist today because he, too, returned.
I remember also that Canadian casualties (per capita) were so heavy in the First World War that entire towns were essentially depopulated, and that we lost about 45,400 men and women (beginning with Hannah Baird, the stewardess who went down on the Athenia) in the Second.*
The casualties for World War I were very heavy for the British Empire Army as a whole--as they were for other armies. (Russia lost the most soldiers, I believe, and after Russia France.) The War to End All Wars was a civilizational disaster and, obviously, did not end all wars. It should have been avoided.
The Second World War was impossible to avoid, even though Britain and France tried to do so. (That was "not being rooted in reality" writ large.) It, too, was a civilizational disaster.
What a century.
There is a third man I think about today, rather to his embarrassment. That is my brother Nulli Secundus, who gladly took the Queen's shilling when he was 16 years old, could take apart and reassemble a rifle blindfolded by the age of 20, and now has a deep-seated disgust for firearms. He never saw action but--to once again quote Milton--"they also serve who only stand and wait"--and service took its toll all the same. Thank God he is growing old "as we who are left grow old" and as indeed our great-grandfather grew old (our grandfather, a chain smoker, died at 65, which no longer seems old).
I never met my great-grandfather, but I think about him and my other ancestors and relations born in Scotland fairly often. If I am near their old addresses, I go out of my way to look.
According to my mother, my husband sounds like my Edinburgh-by-Perthshire great-grandmother. I am not sure what my warrior great-grandfather sounded like. Perhaps he sounded like the men crowding into Baynes' at 7:30 this morning to order coffee and filled rolls. I had popped in to look for rowies, which I'm now afraid can't be found south of Aberdeen. And for a moment I felt like I had my finger to the pulse of real Scotland, flesh-and-blood Scotland, Scotland of the Scots, and not just tourists, foreign students, job-filling English-and-Europeans, and random New World-born immigrants like me.
*Canada's population was about 11.5 million in 1939.
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