Christmas Every Day

There has been much talk recently about what constitutes a genocide. President Trump has opined that the atrocities visited on the Armenians by the Turks a century ago did not fit his definition of the term and a Marxist professor at the University of Alberta claimed that the reports of deliberate mass starvation in Ukraine under Stalin were merely Nazi and capitalist propaganda. This is a piece I wrote for the the Frontier Centre for Public Policy on the subject.

If you are an activist who wants to persuade your fellow citizens of the correctness of your views, the first thing you should do is take control of the English language. Change the meanings of words so that your enemies can be accused of any crime and your side can always claim the moral high ground. 

Here is a good example. “Racist” used to mean someone who held nasty views about other people because of their racial ancestry. It is a terrible accusation which no one wants to be on the receiving end of, so you must be sure that it applies only to people you disagree with. You now define racism to be a sin that can only be committed by white people. You now accuse anyone who wishes to discuss immigration as being a racist. When, over time, that term gets to be shop-worn because you have pretty much accused everybody of it, you switch to “White Supremacist”. So, in our last election you tell Canada that all members of the People’s Party of Canada (even the Afghani refugee candidate in my constituency) are white supremacists. It works.

The same applies to terms such as “sexual assault” or “sexual harassment” whose borders are now so ill-defined that they can apply to conduct ranging from rape and gross indecency to putting up an auto-parts calendar with a pretty girl on it. 

What about “holocaust”? That word moved from meaning a burnt offering to the calculated massacre of millions of Jews and non-Aryans at the hands of Nazis, but which now can be used, for example, by vegans who speak of “the Holocaust on your plate”, or open-border enthusiasts who liken illegal immigrant detention camps to Auschwitz. 

And so it is with genocide, which most users of the English language would say was a word to describe a deliberate attempt to wipe out a whole people. History is replete with such atrocities which have been committed by people of every race on every continent. The most egregious misuse of that term is committed by Canadian aboriginal pressure groups who claim that the Canadian government carried out a “cultural genocide” in its residential schools and that the murders and disappearances of Indigenous women and girls amount to “genocide.”

Let me tell you what a real genocide looks like. “To eat your own children is a barbarian act.” Signs to this effect appeared in the Soviet Ukraine during the Stalinist era in the early 1930s. They were necessary because the communist government had created a man-made famine so devastating that millions starved to death in 1932-33. 

The USSR was no stranger to mass starvation. Lenin’s policy of “war communism” in 1918-21 had crushed private economic production and mandated confiscation of “surplus” grain from the peasantry. The result was a massive drop in the food supply and widespread starvation that necessitated accepting foreign aid from the hated West. A switch to the New Economic Policy (NEP) in the later 1920s encouraged peasants to keep some of their production with the result that granaries were full again. Learning nothing from this, Joseph Stalin instituted a set of economic reforms that collectivized agriculture which once more brought about peasant resistance and shrunken food production. 

In 1931, a bad harvest forced the government to institute rationing and order the forcible seizure of peasant food stocks to feed the urban proletariat. Stalin, fearing a nationalist movement and despising the notion of a prosperous class of farmers, seems to have seized this opportunity to bring Ukraine more completely under his thumb. Hundreds of thousands of productive agricultural workers were shipped to Siberia, or conscripted for work in heavy industry, unrealistic levels of food confiscation, which included farm animals as well as grain, were set for Ukraine, Communist party officials relentlessly hunted for hidden food caches, and grain continued to be shipped out of the country for foreign cash as the people began to starve. The very possession of food was tantamount to a crime. Villages which failed to meet the production quotas were put on a blacklist with death by starvation or typhus a certainty. The life expectancy of a boy born in Ukraine in 1933 was less than 7 years but Moscow refused to alleviate the situation or accept the outside aid which was offered. 

For internal consumption, Stalin blamed “saboteurs” among the peasantry and hidden enemies in the Party itself – special tribunals were set up to try and execute the traitors. For public opinion in the rest of the world, Stalin denied there was anything amiss, bringing in British and American leftists to testify what they saw in the well-stocked hotels of Kiev.

In his grim masterpiece The Bloodlands, historian Timothy Snyder sums up the effect: The good people died first. Those who refused to steal or to prostitute themselves died. Those who gave food to others died. Those who refused to eat corpses died. Those who refused to kill their fellow man died. Parents who resisted cannibalism died before their children did. 

This is what genocide looks like.

Death of a cephalophoric saint

We expect saints to perform miracles. These days, proof of a miraculous cure or two is one of the ways the Catholic Church decides that an individual has exhibited saintly prowess. We do not routinely expect, however, that saints go about lugging their severed heads, but hagiographies abound in cephalophores (head-carriers) and today we celebrate the first of them: St Denis.

St Denis seems to have been sent from Italy to evangelize Roman-occupied Gaul in the third century. He converted so many in the region of what is now Paris that the authorities were alerted to his presence and he, with two companions, was beheaded on the city’s highest point, Montmartre. This execution does not seem to have deterred Denis from picking up his severed sense-organ cluster and walking six miles to his burial site, with the detached head preaching a sermon of repentance all the way.

Other cephalophoric saints include Nicasius of Rheims who was reading a psalm when he was decapitated — his head finished reciting the verse he was on — and St Gemolo who, after his execution, picked up his head mounted a horse and rode off to meet his uncle. St Paul’s head was separated from his body by a sword but, nevertheless, was reputed to have cried out “Jesus Christus” fifty times.

Denis is not to be confused (though he was for centuries) with Dionysius the Areopagite who was converted by Paul in Athens. And of the latter’s imposter, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, we shall remain silent.

2006 Murder of five Amish children

On October 2, 2006, an employed church-going husband and loving father named Charles Carl Roberts IV entered a one-room schoolhouse in West Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania and took the teacher and students hostage. After allowing some of his prisoners to leave, Roberts then lined up the remaining ten students, all girls, and began to shoot them. He killed five and wounded five others before killing himself as police broke in to the building. His suicide notes gave a variety of reasons for his actions, including a history of sexual molestation and anger at God.

What astonished the world after these deaths was the reaction of the local Amish community which reacted not with anger or frustrated calls for vengeance but with compassion for the killer and pity for his family. A spokesman said, “I don’t think there’s anybody here that wants to do anything but forgive and not only reach out to those who have suffered a loss in that way but to reach out to the family of the man who committed these acts.” Amish residents attended Roberts’s’ funeral and embraced his relatives. These extraordinary examples of Christian behaviour helped healing in the lives of all concerned. The killer’s wife, Marie Roberts, said that she and her three young children had been overwhelmed by the community support. “Your love for our family has helped to provide the healing we so desperately need,” she wrote. “Gifts you’ve given have touched our hearts in a way no words can describe. … Your compassion has reached beyond our family, beyond our community, and is changing our world, and for this we sincerely thank you.” Terri Roberts, the killer’s mother, still volunteers to care for one of the victims, confined to a wheel-chair for life.

October 1

St Theresa of Lisieux

There is nothing to say that saints have to live long and arduous lives; hagiographies are full of the tales of young people who have been canonized for flashes of sanctitude or a single action. Few saints of tender years can have had so great an influence as this French woman who died at the age of 24 after a long battle with tuberculosis.

Marie-Françoise-Thérèse Martin (1873-97) was born into a pious middle-class family in northwestern France and decided at an early age she wished to be a nun, a resolve that strengthened when she experienced a vision of the Virgin. At 15 she entered the Discalced (Shoeless or Barefoot) Carmelites, a contemplative order of cloistered women with a house at Lisieux, Normandy which her sisters had already joined. She took the religious name Theresa of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face. The rest of her short life she spent inside the walls of her convent, praying, serving and writing.

Love proves itself by deeds, so how am I to show my love? Great deeds are forbidden me. The only way I can prove my love is by scattering flowers and these flowers are every little sacrifice, every glance and word, and the doing of the least actions for love.

It is through her exposition of “the little way” that made Theresa famous, winning her sainthood after her death and the title Doctor of the Church. In her poetry and her autobiography, The Story of a Soul, Theresa advocated a life of child-like trust and small loving actions. She is the patroness of African missions, those suffering from AIDS or tuberculosis, air crews and florists.

1627 Birth of the “Eagle of Meaux”

Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet (1627-1704) has been called the greatest pulpit orator ever; his name is a byword for elegance of speech. As a preacher and Catholic bishop he engaged in the great religious controversies of his time, taking on Protestants, Quietists, ultramontanists and secularists; as a tutor to the heir to the throne he failed miserably.

Bossuet was born to a prosperous provincial family of lawyers with powerful connections. He was destined by his family for the Church and in the amiable corruption of the age became tonsured at age 10 and a canon of the cathedral of Metz at 13. Though he continued to take advantage of sins against canon law such as absenteeism, Bossuet took his religious commitment seriously; he studied for the priesthood under St Frances de Sales and received his Doctor of Divinity.

Even in his teens Bossuet had a reputation as a brilliant public speaker and he eventually attracted the attention of the court of Louis XIV. He preached before royalty and was rewarded with a bishopric and the post of tutor to Louis’ oldest son, the Grand Dauphin. His efforts in this regard were misplaced and wasted. To school the lumpish lad he wrote three grand tomes, a treatise on knowing God and oneself, a history of the world, and a creaky master-piece entitled  Politique Tirée des Propres Paroles de L’Ecriture Sainte. [This is the book I translated as Political Theory Drawn from the Very Words of Holy Scripture for part of my Master’s thesis.] The latter was the last bold attempt at defending absolute monarchy, no surprise from a courtier of the Sun King, but it fell on deaf ears — not only those of the Dauphin but the larger world about to experience the Enlightenment and the Age of Revolutions. It may be said that Bossuet was born a generation too late but that his golden expressions are still valued by lovers of the French language.

In the 19th century, Sudanese territory was claimed by Egypt, which ran a corrupt and oppressive rule over the territory. In 1881 a devout Muslim religious scholar named Muhammad Ahmad declared himself the Mahdi, the legendary prophesied figure that would appear at the end of time and who would herald the arrival of Isa (Jesus) and the Final Judgment. He was able to rally the disaffected tribes of the Sudan against the Egyptians, conquering much of the upper Nile valley. Like ISIS and their caliphate, the Mahdi attempted to reintroduce the pure, harsh Islam of the 7th century.

After several military attempts to defeat the Mahdi, the British (who now controlled Egypt) decided to pull out of the Sudan and sent the charismatic, popular hero General Charles Gordon to arrange the evacuation. Gordon, instead, chose to stay and fight. He and his troops were massacred in the capital Khartoum in 1884, causing an enormous scandal back in Britain. Though the Mahdi soon died, his successor, known as the Khalifa, built a powerful Mahdist state that attempted to spread its variety of Islam by the sword.

In 1898 the British decided to put an end to this threat to European imperialism in Africa, sending an army up the Nile, under General Herbert Kitchener. The Mahdist forces greatly outnumbered Kitchener’s troops but the British had machine guns and artillery. Near the confluence of the Blue and White Niles at Omdurman, the wild charges of the Mahdists (called “dervishes” or “Fuzzy-Wuzzy” by the British) were mowed down by disciplined fire of the more modern army.

Four Victorian Crosses were awarded for that day’s action including one to a Canadian, Captain Raymond de Montmorency of the 21st Lancers (whose charge is depicted here.)

The citation for the medal reads: “At the Battle of Khartum on the 2nd September 1898, Lieutenant de Montmorency, after the charge of the 21st Lancers, returned to assist Second Lieutenant R. G. Grenfell, who was lying surrounded by a large body of Dervishes. Lieutenant de Montmorency drove the Dervishes off, and, finding Lieutenant Grenfell dead, put the body on his horse which then broke away. Captain Kenna and Corporal Swarbrick then came to his assistance, and enabled him to rejoin the Regiment, which had begun to open a heavy fire on the enemy.”

De Montmorency was born in Quebec in 1867, the son of a British general, and he joined the British Army at the age of 20. After Sudan, de Montmorency was assigned to South Africa where he fought in the Boer War, dying at the Battle of Stormberg in 1900.

The classic 1939 movie “The Four Feathers” recreates the Battle of Omdurman with a cast of tens of thousands. It’s quite impressive. Do not, on any account, watch the putrid remake of 2003.

1217 Death of Kaupo the Accursed

One of the joys of being a medieval historian is understanding the nicknames of famous leaders of the day. A single battle in 1066, for example, transformed William “the Bastard” into William “the Conqueror” while a lifetime of feckless behaviour earned Ethelred the label of “the Unready”. Wonderful stories lie behind the origins of sobriquets like “Bushy-Brow”, “the Impotent”, “the Boneless”, “Hare-Foot”, “the Twister”, and “Blood-Axe”. But what about Kaupo of Livonia who ended up being known as “the Accursed”?

The last parts of Europe to be Christianized lay at the eastern end of the Baltic, between the Orthodox lands of Russia and Catholic Germany and Poland, inhabited by tribes of Finns, Livonians, Latvians, etc. Attempts to peacefully evangelize them were met with resistance, prompting a series of Northern Crusades by military orders such as the Teutonic Knights or Knights of the Sword who combined missionary work with brutal conquest.

As these German-speaking orders pressed eastward, one of the first Livonians to accept baptism was Kaupo of Turaida, a local chieftain who so impressed the Bishop of Riga that he took him to Rome where he was presented to the pope. On his return to his native land, however, Kaupo was rejected for his new religion and alliances with foreigners. He had to reconquer his own castle and died fighting along side crusaders against pagan Estonians; for his divided loyalties he was labelled a traitor and “the Accursed”. It was not until the early 1300s that the territory was nominally Christianized.

I pause here to draw your attention to two Canadians of whom you have never heard. They were not particularly great, and they are not men of the 20^thcentury, so they will not pop up on my list – but their appearances in history are remarkable.

If one were to ask what were the most interesting battles of the 19^thcentury, the answer would certainly include Waterloo in 1815, where Wellington defeated Napoleon, or Sedan in 1870 where the Prussians smashed the French under Napoleon III. Both battles ended French empires. But for sheer excitement, you can’t beat the Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava during the Crimean War in 1854 or the Battle of Omdurman, where the jihadists of Sudan faced the British in 1898. Today, I’ll tell you about Balaclava.

For the first time in over 600 years, the British and French armies were allies, not enemies. Their governments decided to prop up the shaky Ottoman Empire of the Turks and protect it from Russian ambitions to drive Turkey out of Europe, retake Constantinople and have an outlet to the Mediterranean. (The world would have been a better place if they had been allowed to do so, but that’s a topic for a rant on another day.) This explains what badly-equipped and atrociously-led French and British armies were doing on the Crimean peninsula, besieging Sevastopol in 1854.

On October 25, a misunderstood communication between the commander, Lord Raglan, and his light cavalry forces resulted in disaster and glory. Raglan meant to send his troops to recapture some British artillery that had been hauled away by the Russians but his messenger, Captain Nolan screwed up, and pointed the cavalry, led by the Earl of Cardigan, toward a heavily defended valley lined with Russian artillery. The exchange went like this:

“Attack, sir!”

“Attack what? What guns, sir?”

“There, my Lord, is your enemy!” said Nolan indignantly, vaguely waving his arm eastwards. “There are your guns!

And so, Cardigan, knowing full well that this was madness, ordered his 670 horsemen up the valley to attack 20 battalions of dug-in infantry and 50 artillery pieces. This charge was suicidal but it was carried out successfully. The men and horses were shredded by Russian guns for over a mile before they reached the end of the valley where they destroyed some Russian positions and rode back out, under heavy fire again from three sides.

The cost was 118 men killed, 127 wounded, and about 60 taken prisoner, with 335 horses destroyed. The various generals all blamed each other and Captain Nolan, but Alfred Tennyson immortalized the engagement in his poem “The Charge of the Light Brigade”.

So why am I telling you all this? Because, to my astonishment, I learned that a Canadian had taken part in the charge and, better yet, had been awarded a Victoria Cross. More about him, Alexander Roberts Dunn and his mysterious grave, tomorrow.

Next up on our whirlwind tour of the Top 10 Canadians of the 20^thCentury is Reginald Fessenden, born in Quebec in 1866, the son of an Anglican minister. He was a bright kid but bounced from one educational facility to another but never seeming to get a degree. Despite knowing nothing about electricity, he got a job as a lab assistant for one of Thomas Edison’s departments. Using that experience he got a job in the electrical engineering department of what became the University of Pittsburgh where he began to experiment with the newly discovered “wireless telegraphy”.

Fessenden pioneered many electronic principles and devices that made signals more powerful and capable of sending voice messages, instead of just Morse code. The result of this was the invention of AM radio. Here is how the Encyclopedia Britannica explains his idea:

He developed the idea of superimposing an electric signal, oscillating at the frequencies of sound waves, upon a radio wave of constant frequency, so as to modulate the amplitude of the radio wave into the shape of the sound wave. (This is the principle of amplitude modulation, or AM.) The receiver of this combined wave would separate the modulating signal from the carrier wave and reproduce the sound for the listener.

Using this notion, he was responsible for the world’s first radio program. Fessenden had a contract to provide ships of the United Fruit Company with wireless receivers and on Christmas Eve 1906, he beamed these vessels a broadcast of recorded and live music (played by Fessenden) and a passage from the Gospel of Luke. 

Despite this triumph by one of its native sons, the Canadian government gave the Italian inventor Marconi exclusive rights to build wireless stations in Canada

After his work with radio, which produced enormous legal headaches for years, he went on to engineer the Niagara Falls power plant, and invent sonar, microfilm, tracer bullets, seismological techniques, a turboelectric drive for battleships, and television apparatus. After many years of litigation and struggle over patents he became wealthy when his intellectual property was finally recognized; he retired to Bermuda where he died in 1932.