Thanks for the victory
Sir: Your comments on the Falklands ser- vice in St Paul's Cathedral (Notebook, 31 July) seem to me mistaken. Why should God not be thanked for a victory? If not for that, what can he be thanked for? Singing a Te Deum in St Paul's after a conclusive military success is traditional. You say the Archbishop 'decided he could not claim divine approval for the South Atlantic campaign'. Who on earth asked him to? Had he done so I, for one, would have thought he was getting too big for his boots.
`War is a sign of human failure,' said the Archbishop, and I am sure everyone was very relieved that he did not continue '...on the part of some middle echelons in the Foreign Office and the United Nations negotiating machinery'. I expect he meant to say that war, like practically everything else, is a sign of Original Sin, that it is sometimes the lesser of two evils and that, if victory is gained, we do well to thank God as well as the sailors and soldiers. I suppose that if he had spoken quite so plainly three- quarters of the clergy would have been upset, even if he had added that, according to Christ's teaching, there is no reason why General Galtieri should not get to heaven as soon as any of them — or Mrs Thatcher.
If Mrs Thatcher wishes to thank the Almighty for a victory, so too did Drake, Cromwell, Nelson and Wellington. And a good thing too — their gratitude helped them to keep a sense of proportion. I have neither read nor heard anything that sug- gests Mrs Thatcher thinks the Falklands vic- tory is comparable with, say, the Battle of the Nile. Your own description — 'risky and basically unnecessary' — is tenden- tious. Of course it was risky. But 'un- necessary'? Would you settle for 'highly desirable'? 'Basically' does not seem to add much, unless you wished to hint that soldiers and sailors are obsolete and politics best left to the middle echelons of the FO, the negotiating machinery of the UN and clergymen who do not believe in OS.
Charles Pickthorn
3 Horbury Street, London SW10
Previous page
