FOOD FOR THOUGHT	Fr Francis Marsden.
	For 9 Nov 1986
HOME THOUGHTS FROM ABROAD	(Remembrance Sunday)

One foggy October morning in northern France, I was motorcycling along the dead straight road from Arras to Cambrai. The patchy mist wreathed the vast ploughed fields, occasionally filled with cabbages, on either side. Every few kilometres blue direction signs loomed up out of the mist: “British War Cemetery 2 km.”, “New Zealand National Memorial 1.5 km”, “Cimitière de guerre”, “Deutscher Soldatenfriedhof”, “Canadian War Memorial” and so on. Even beside the main road, the ploughland would suddenly be interrupted by a field full of anonymous white crosses in regular drill formation.

“Eternal rest give unto them . . “ I tried to pray as I passed each gravefield. “And Lord, keep me safe from those big lorries too. I don’t want to join them.” Sober thoughts occupied me — the echoes of gunfire and shells through the cold mist of those same bleak fields, forty and seventy years ago. I pulled my scarf more closely round my neck to keep out the damp.

How Europe changes. A few days previously, the border guard had waved me through the Dutch—German frontier near Aachen, without even checking my passport. The same has happened entering Belgium and Luxembourg. I had stayed three days in a German village parish, surrounded by vineyards, in the Mosel valley, and met great kindness and friendliness.

Many country lanes crossing the national frontiers are apparently now unguarded. At Echternach, we crossed a river footbridge from Luxembourg into West Germany. No guards. Just. a notice to remind you that you are entering the Bundesrepublik. Think back fifty years. There would have been troop build-ups, checkpoints, watchtowers, gun emplacements, and tanks. mobilising.

Not all is quiet, however. American jets scream across the Eifel and Hunsruck hills, shattering the dozy peace of the villages along the Mosel banks. Training, just in case of another conflict.

Only the channel ports, Rotterdam and Dover, checked my passport. Also entering France near Douai the border guard had been about to wave me through, but I stopped and declared “Je suis anglais.” He felt obliged to make some pretence of national security, and his friends all came to stand round and look at my motorbike. Obviously a rare moment of interest for them all in an otherwise routine day.

“What’s happened to all the frontiers?” would be a very British question. Her Majesty’s servants. still rigorously check all passports. The island fortress mentality persists. Elsewhere there are still frontiers, barbed wire through the streets of Berlin, Belfast and Beirut. They outwardly express the frontiers dividing the human heart: love and peace versus fear, greed and lust for power.

As Catholics and members of the worldwide international Church, we should be exemplary in our openness to other races. and languages. nationalistic prejudice has no place in the body of Christ. Catholic means Universal.

We have the precious opportunity, denied to many of our forefathers, of travelling freely amongst our European neighbours: making friends, learning their languages, customs, history and lifestyle. Coming to love instead of fearing what is different.

Moreover, it was the Gospel and the Saints who formed Europe as we know it. Monks and missionaries civilized the pagan tribes, converted their kings, became their state advisors, erected cathedrals, schools, hospitals. and almshouses... A similar story in Holland, Belgium, France, England or Germany. between 600 and 900 A.D. the Gospel formed England out of warring tribes. Only the Gospel can hold her together. Without it she disintegrates.

Love of our neighbours does not mean scorning the land of our own birth, entrusted to us by God. Of course, we should be patriotic and love our country, but how? It is hardly constructive to wear Union Jack T-shirts and Doc Martens, and beat up immigrants. Nor will much be achieved by crude jingoism of the variety: "My country right or wrong”, “Bash the Argies.” Nor is love of Britain measured by the time one spends drooling over the latest gutter press intrusions into the lives of Princess Di and Fergie.

To love Britain is to desire what is truly good for her’. Good according to God’s laws and commandments, the only guarantee of equity and justice. It means preaching and living the Gospel. It means the elimination of crime, violence, corruption and such evils as abortion and pornography. It means strengthening family life and love. It means helping to make Britain a force for good and not greed in the world: a nation that cares for the poor at home and overseas.

Who can be proud of a grasping, mean, lazy and quarrelsome country, exploiter of the poor, narrow, prejudiced and decadent? We want a land upright, clean and Christian, diligent and generous, a ‘land fit for heroes’ and worthy of their memory. They lie now in the misty fields by the Somme and Vimy Ridge. Today we pray for them. They will pray for us. Let us resolve: 
“I shall not sleep from mental fight, nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, 
  Till we have built Jerusalem in England’s green and pleasant land.”