"Atrocity-mongering is the rule in every war..."

The rule, yes? Or not?

This post's title comes from the Foreword to Above All Nations. The original book, a slim volume, not even available today on Find in a Library, was published by Victor Gollancz in 1945, as the war drew "to its close in a welter of terror and agony for millions".

I came across a second-hand copy of the book in Fish Hoek, South Africa, last October, at a time when I was transcribing letters that my mother had received from a close friend during the Second World War, and was consequently particularly curious about contemporary feelings and attitudes.

The intention of the compilers, George Catlin, Vera Brittain and Sheila Hodges was to show "that even amidst the illimitable degradation of modern warfare men of all nations [could] be decent and merciful to those who, at the very moment [were] their mortal enemies".

"Hope must come, if it is to come at all" he continued, "from...the faith that in every human being some goodness is latent". Can we feel that hope today? Can we find magnimosity in a bleak landscape?

Today, with this blog, I have taken the first steps towards creating something like a sequel to Above All Nations. I'm planning to use a Google Page to create a web site that will record humane acts towards enemies, whether hostages, civilians or soldiers - even though this record may well be a mere mole-hill beside a noisy mountain of atrocities - anything, anything to counter my heavy sense that, as Auden wrote, suffering is taking place "while someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along" - or blogging...