Postscript
VE thoughts
P.J. Kavanagh
(In the radio some public figures were V asked how they began their day. Most of them confessed it was with the newspap- ers and/or the BBC Today programme. (The father of Isaac Bashevis Singer said that to begin the day with newspapers was 'like eating poison for breakfast'.) That old newspaperman Malcolm Muggcridge, however, apologised for having to admit that he and his wife began the day with prayers.
Thereby they save themselves a subtle pain. I have no wish to hurt his feelings but I would like to found a Society for the Prevention of Jokes by Peter Hobday. He is a presenter of the Today programme. The best known ones are John Timpson and Brian Redhead, who are both jokers. Mr Timpson's jokes are usually good, because they come naturally; Mr Red- head's are cheeky, cheery, self-indulgent and indulged also by his companion; you can imagine them both talking in the same way in the canteen. But Mr Hobday sounds naturally earnest, determined to get to the bottom of some ephemeral political point he is pursuing with any minister who eagerly leapt into the radio-car. Then, alas, he remembers his absent colleagues and the light tone they give to the programme. He essays a Joke.
I may only be a Society of one, but there are some people who should be prevented from making jokes, when these lower the room temperature. They cannot help it, but we do not need jokes all the time, and I experience this chill effect from Mr Hob- day's. It is true it is augmented some- times by other items on the programme which are also intended to lighten our darkness.
The Muggeridges are also spared other things. At a certain point comes Though!
for the Day. At times it is reasonable; at other times you know at once that you would be better off with your own Thought. But last week I was slowly alerted to the import of what one cleric was saying.
He devoted three consecutive mornings to reminding us, surely unnecessarily, what loathesome beasts the three main Nazi leaders were. He presented them as un- speakable aberrations, beyond forgive- ness. This was odd, coming from a Chris- tian minister. Then it struck me as worse than that, as clean contrary to Christian teaching. In fact it is the Soviet line, and a bad idea in any terms.
'Judge not, that ye be not judged', at least in the ultimate sense, and if anyone needs praying for it is those three. (I wonder if Mr Muggeridge prays for Hitler; I should not be surprised.) This is not to 'condone' their evil. I apologise for the obviousness of this, but from the tone of what is being written in connection with the VE celebrations it is not obvious at all. To hate the sin but not the sinner is a clarifying distinction that has not been much in evidence. Thus, to take the matter away from religion and into politics, it was clearly a good idea for President Reagan to visit the German war cemetery, because reconciliation must be good.
The alternative is continuing hatreds and we all know how good we are at those, or should know. Those Thoughts for the Day seemed designed to encourage our hatred. It was meant as a warning, that such events must not happen again. But it fosters an illusion about our souls.
Which is not to say that in some muddled way 'we are all guilty'. We are not. If some jovial ex-SS man in a Paraguayan café told me that it all could have happened in my country and, given a different deal of cards, I too could have guarded a concen- tration camp I would pour his lager over his head, or worse. The short answer is that it didn't, and I wasn't. But in my indigna- tion there would he a touch of fear. These crimes were human crimes, and an extra- ordinary number of humans committed them. If we avoid this knowledge by massaging our hatreds we have not learned the greatest and most humanly expensive lesson we have ever been taught.
This does not seem possible, when we have had so long to mull it over. But I suspect this is the impression they would receive, who began their days recently with the newspapers, and even with Thought for the Day. If it is true, Mr Muggeridge is not only doing a sensible thing, it is the only one.
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