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Season 1 Episodes

This is the 43rd edition of Page One. It is also the War Edition. In this edition, Charles Adrian reads from a variety of books that touch on the subject of war and plays tunes that make some reference to warring, fighting or battling. This is an episode to provoke thought.

Cosmos by Carl Sagan is also discussed in Page One 26 and Page One 162.

This episode was recorded in Acton for London Fields Radio.

This episode has been edited to remove music that is no longer covered by licence for this podcast.

A transcript of this episode is below.

Episode released: 8th July, 2013.

Book listing: 

The Art Of War by Niccolò Macchiavelli (trans. Mark Musa and Peter Bondanella)

You Have No Country! By Mary E. Marcy

The Church And The Bomb by anon.

Love, Sex and War 1939-1945 by John Costello

Cosmos by Carl Sagan

Links:

Page One 26

Page One 162

Charles Adrian

Episode transcript:

Jingle
You're listening... you're listening to London Fields Radio.

Charles Adrian
Hello and welcome to the 43rd Page One. This is London Fields Radio. I'm Charles Adrian and I'm broadcasting, in a sense, from my home, as is more and more often the case. This is what you might call the war edition, or a war addition - I have to admit I... war is often on my mind - but we'll come to that in a moment. First of all, this is going to go up on or around the 8th of July, which is the day on which, in Manchester, an event called Beat The Frog is taking place at the Frog And Bucket. In honour of that, here is Judy Garland live at Carnegie Hall.

Music
[extract from Live At Carnegie Hall by Judy Garland - in which, after the applause dies down following her performance of Do It Again, she says to the audience: “I've got a... a bit of a frog in my throat. I think I... I picked up an old fungi in Atlanta, Georgia or something. I'm going to get a... a sip of... of water. You... I'll be... I'll be back... right back. You talk to each other...” There is more applause, which dies down. Then an audience member shouts: “I love you!” and another audience member says: “Me too!” There is laughter and more applause. Then Judy Garland returns to the microphone and says: “Talk to each other or something! Mill around for a second.”]

Charles Adrian
Judy Garland there.

Now I'm going to start this edition with a reading from one of the greats. This is Niccolò Machiavelli's The Art Of War. He occasionally gets bad press, I think, as if he invented dodgy, hypocritical, slimy, backstabbing behavior. But he was merely a supreme analyst, I think, who saw what was happening and pointed out the significant political advantage of such behaviour. His work makes fascinating reading, as much today as ever. Here is... So I'm going to read you the first page of The Art Of War. This is a Penguin Classics edition, price 60p, first published in 1979 and this edition is from 1995. So here we are: the preface to The Book Of The Art Of War by…

Niccolò Machiavelli,
Citizen and Florentine secretary,
to Lorenzo di Filippo Strozzi,
Florentine patrician

Many, Lorenzo, have held and still hold this opinion, that no two things have less in common or differ more from each other than a civil and a military life. Hence, one often notices that if a person plans to excel in military life, he not only immediately changes his way of dressing but also his habits, his customs and his voice, thus setting himself apart from every civilian custom; for he cannot believe that he who seeks to be ready for any sort of violence can wear civilian clothes; nor can civilian habits and practices be followed by one who judges these practices to be effeminate and these customs to be useless to his profession; nor does it appear suitable to retain normal behaviour and speech when he wishes to terrify other men with his beard and his curses. This makes such an opinion in these times seem to be very true. But if ancient institutions are taken into consideration, one will find no two things more united, more alike, and...

There we go, a short first page.

Another person worrying about the overlap between civil and military life is Mary E. Marcy, who I have to admit I'd never heard of before I saw her book in a shop just near Kings Cross station but she's described by Eugene V. Debs - I don't know if maybe initials were all the rage at the time - as one of the clearest minds and greatest souls in all our movement. And what is her movement? Let me read from the back of this Kerr edition:

A leading figure in the left wing of the Socialist Party during the First World War, Mary E. Marcy (1877-1922) was managing editor of The International Socialist Review, the most popular and influential revolutionary journal of the period. Collected here for the first time are articles detailing Marcy's penetrating analysis of the social and economic causes of war and her libertarian socialist perspective on the struggle against war. Largely because of the articles in this book, The International Socialist Review was suppressed by the U.S. government in 1918. As a summary of the revolutionary Marxist view of war, You Have No Country! (exclamation mark) is unexcelled. Written nearly three quarters of a century ago, Marcy's hard-hitting critique is still as fresh as today's headlines. First in a series of reprints of Mary Marcy's writings, this collection is edited... (da da da da da)

So this is, yeah, You Have No Country!, subtitled Workers' Struggle Against War, and it was published in Chicago in 1984 by Charles H. Kerr - likewise with an initial - Publishing Company, which was established in [laughing] 1886. There you go, that's all the information I have about this book. Here is the first page:

The Real Fatherland

What has your country ever done for you, Mr Working Man? Has it been a real fatherland to you? Has it looked after your welfare? Has it given you the opportunity to have a warm home in the winter? Has it seen that you have clothing and food? Has it fed your children and assured them of sunshine and schooltime and playtime to fit them for the real work of life? Are you a German, Frenchman or Englishman? Are you Russian, Australian or Italian? Are you an American? It does not matter. This question applies to every working man in the world. What has your country ever done for you? Surely no one expects you to love a particular geographical district upon the face of the earth just because you happen to be born on it - unless that district has done something for you. When you were a child, did your country throw protecting arms about you and feed and clothe and shelter you? Or did your working class father and mother have to struggle to give you a place to eat and sleep? Is there one spot in all your country where you may rest and live and sleep in peace without the weekly or monthly dig-up to a landlord? And if you have no money to pay rent, and no work to earn money to pay rent, does your country come to your assistance and give you work? Or does your country send around a sheriff or some other city official to set you out in the snow and another official drive you from the city...

There we go. I think these are still good and powerful questions that those returning from war - in the Middle East, perhaps, and other places - may occasionally ask themselves today.

This... I'm going to play you a... some music now and this starts with another good question. This is The Cranberries with War Child.

Music
[War Child by The Cranberries]

Charles Adrian
Now, from 1982 - and bought originally by Bill Dufton, who's written his name in the... in the front cover - my next book has the kind of colourful blocky font on its cover that makes everything look more fun. It also has a picture of a mushroom cloud. It's called The Church And The Bomb, Nuclear Weapons And Christian Conscience and it's described as the report of a working party under the chairmanship of the Bishop of Salisbury. Here's some more from the back:

Does a mushroom-shaped shadow hang over the future of mankind or does the absolute deterrent abolish war? No one in the modern world can afford to ignore this fundamental question - least of all those in the church. Some Christians have accepted the theory of deterrence as realistic and necessary, others have rejected weapons of such overwhelming destructiveness as morally intolerable. The nuclear escalation, combined with the rebirth of the peace movement in Western Europe, has underlined the need for renewed Christian debate. The Church And The Bomb cannot state the view of the Church of England, but its contribution to this vital debate is both vigorous and far-reaching. The report combines an analysis of the technical issues and exploration of the underlying moral questions and detailed recommendations concerning NATO and the British nuclear deterrent.

It is published, apparently, jointly with CIO Publishing and it cost £4.50 when it was first published, which I find extraordinary. Here's the first page... Of the introduction, I should say:

Introduction

The working party which has produced the report upon which this book is based, takes its origin from a resolution of the General Synod of the Church of England. The Synod, meeting in London in July 1979, agreed: “that this Synod, grateful that the church's role in preserving and promoting peace has been opened up by this report, urges the Board for Social Responsibility to explore how the theological debate relating to discipleship in this field might be more effectively and purposefully conducted throughout the Church of England in the light of the witness and insights of the whole ecumenical movement.”
As the resolution indicated, the Board for Social Responsibility had already produced a report on the general subject of arms and disarmament, Christians In A Violent World, which had been the subject of the Synod's debate. The Board now responded to the Synod's resolution by inviting us to serve on a working party with the following terms of reference: (i) To study the implications for Christian discipleship of the acceptance by the major military powers of a role for thermonuclear weapons in their strategy; (ii) To consider the bearing of this on the adequacy of past Christian teaching and ethical analysis regarding the conduct of war; (iii) To advise the Board on ways in which members of the churches can be helped to participate more effectively in public debate on these issues; and (iv) From time to time, to prepare for publication discussion papers on the matters under consideration.
We met for the first time in July 1980. Since then, we have met on ten occasions, of which three were residential meetings. We agreed the text of the present report at a meeting in 1982.

Here's the late, great Amy Winehouse singing Some Unholy War.

Music
[Some Unholy War by Amy Winehouse]

Charles Adrian
Now, I should probably admit that the previous book is not one that I'm moved to go on reading but the next is John Costello's Love, Sex And War 1939 - 1945, which, according to the London Standard, “EXPLODES WHATEVER MYTHS MAY STILL PERSIST”. Published by Pan Books, this edition is from 1986 and falling apart a bit. It is, according to The Observer:

A fascinating, sprawling book, larded not only with statistics, but also with anecdotes and personal memoirs, and covering an astonishing amount of ground. It has chapters on the ATS and women in uniform generally, on homosexuality in the Forces, on Hollywood's presentation of the war, on ‘fraternisation,’ black propaganda and ‘sexpionage,’ on VD and on virtually everything else one might think of.

[laughing] I have to admit that that list already covers all of the things that I was thinking of. Here is the first page of the introduction:

“The mutual relations between the two sexes seems to us to be at least as important as the mutual relations of any two governments in the world.” Thomas Babington Macaulay, historian and British Secretary of State for War, 1840

Sex and war have always been inextricably linked. Two thousand years ago the Roman poet Horace pointed out that long before the fall of Troy, lust had been the cause of grievous war. The Greek campaign against the legendary city of Asia Minor probably owed more to the ancient Greeks' passion for commerce than the Trojan king's passion for the fabled Helen, yet, even if economics rather than sex has precipitated war from time immemorial, the relaxation of moral restraint endemic to war has also had a profound impact on sexual relationships and the relationships between sexes throughout history.
To the men and women who lived and fought through the greatest conflict in human history, World War II was the pivotal emotional experience in their lives. Individual testimony indicates that what people were fighting for had less to do with abstract notions of freedom or patriotism than with individual emotional values represented by sweethearts, wives and families. Sex and sexuality in all its guises and complexities played an extensive role in the war experience.
Love, Sex and War is an examination of the sexual aspect of World War II. In putting the experience in a social perspective, it does not set out to tackle the larger issue of why men and women did what they did, or how the social and psychological forces released by war worked dramatic historical changes. Forty years later, the mechanism of these processes is still being hotly debated by academic historians and social scientists. This study is a broad documentary review of wartime sexual activity and attitudes among the Americans and the British. It is intended as a set of signposts rather than a roadmap to the complex social topography that is the collective and often anomalous wartime experience of sex.
Any account of the sexual aspect of World War II is complicated by the...

Jingle
London Fields Radio... it's London Fields Radio.

Charles Adrian
Now, before we go on to my last book for today, I'm going play Jordin Sparks singing Battlefield.

Music
[Battlefield by Jordin Sparks]

Charles Adrian
That was Jordin Sparks with Battlefield. That may well be the best track I've played today.

Now, this part of the... this part of the show is really a coda. I'm not going to read the first page of anything but I'm going to read a passage from the middle of Cosmos by Carl Sagan, which sharp-eared listeners will know was given to me by Gary Merry as part of the 17th Second Hand Book Factory. Here, Carl Sagan discusses an idea that I have not made up my mind about: How much can war be described as a big fight, essentially? Here it is:

L. F. Richardson was a British meteorologist interested in war. He wished to understand its causes. There are intellectual parallels between war and weather. Both are complex. Both exhibit regularities, implying that they are not implacable forces but natural systems that can be understood and controlled. To understand the global weather you must first collect a great body of meteorological data ; you must discover how the weather actually behaves. Our approach must be the same, Richardson decided, if we are to understand warfare. So, for the years between 1820 and 1945, he collected data on the hundreds of wars that had then been fought on our poor planet.
Richardson's results were published posthumously in a book called The Statistics of Deadly Quarrels. Because he was interested in how long you had to wait for a war that would claim a specified number of victims, he defined an index, M, the magnitude of a war, a measure of the number of immediate deaths it causes. A war of magnitude M = 3 might be merely a skirmish, killing only a thousand people (10 [to the power of three]). M = 5 or M = 6 denote more serious wars, where a hundred thousand (10 [to the power of five]) or a million (10 [to the power of six]) people are killed. World Wars I and II had larger magnitudes. He found that the more people killed in a war, the less likely it was to occur, and the longer before you would witness it, just as violent storms occur less frequently than cloudbursts. From his data we can construct a graph which shows how long on the average during the past century and a half you would have to wait to witness a war of magnitude M.
Richardson proposed that if you continue the curve to very small values of M, all the way to M = 0, it roughly predicts the worldwide incidence of murder ; somewhere in the world someone is murdered every five minutes. Individual killings and wars on the larger scale are, he said, two ends of a continuum, an unbroken curve. It follows, not only in a trivial sense but also I believe in a very deep psychological sense, that war is murder writ large. When our well-being is threatened, when our illusions about ourselves are challenged, we tend – some of us at least – to fly into murderous rages. And when the same provocations are applied to nation states, they, too, sometimes fly into murderous rages, egged on often enough by those seeking personal power or profit. But as the technology of murder improves and the penalties of war increase, a great many people must be made to fly into murderous rages simultaneously for a major war to be mustered. Because the organs of mass communication are often in the hands of the state, this can commonly be arranged.

And, in brackets here:

(Nuclear war is the exception. It can be triggered by a very small number of people.)

So. I have been Charles Adrian. This has been the 43rd Page One for London Fields Radio. This is the end of this week's podcast and here, to finish, is a track that I love. This is Hang Me Up To Dry by Cold War Kids. Thanks very much, peeps. Come back next week for more.

Music
[Hang Me Up To Dry by Cold War Kids]

[Initial transcription by https://otter.ai]