Thirty facts about Prince Philip

1

The Duke of Edinburgh was born at the villa ‘Mon Repos’ on the island of Corfu, on 10 June 1921. He left Corfu on 3 December 1922, when he was just 18 months old.

2

The Duke was Head Boy of his school. From 1934 Prince Philip went to Gordonstoun school in Morayshire, Scotland. He excelled at sports and physical activities, ending as captain of the school’s hockey and cricket teams.

3

After leaving school The Duke of Edinburgh took the Civil Service examination and was accepted into the Royal Navy as a Special Entry Cadet. At the Britannia Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, the Duke was awarded the King’s Dirk as the best all-round cadet of his term and the Eardley-Howard-Crockett Prize for the best cadet (the prize was a £2 book token).

4

The Duke was in active service in the Royal Navy throughout the Second World war. The Duke’s first naval appointment, aged 18, was as a midshipman to HMS RAMILLIES, which escorted the first contingents of the Allied Expeditionary Force from Australia to Egypt. The Duke of Edinburgh was mentioned in dispatches for his service in the Second World War. His Royal Highness joined HMS VALIANT in the Mediterranean Fleet and was involved in several engagements, including, on 21 March 1941, the battle of Matapan against the Italian fleet.

5

At the age of 21, Prince Philip was one of the youngest officers in the Royal Navy to be made First Lieutenant and second-in-command of a ship - destroyer escort HMS WALLACE of the Rosyth Escort Force. In July 1943 Wallace was despatched to the Mediterranean and provided cover for the Canadian beachhead of the Allied landings in Sicily. Prince Philip later served in the destroyer HMS WHELP in the Pacific, and was present in Tokoyo Bay for the Japanese surrender on 2 September 1945.

6

The Duke of Ediburgh is an Admiral of the Fleet in the Royal Navy, a Field Marshal in the British Army, and a Marshal of the Royal Air Force.

7

Most people know him as HRH The Duke of Edinburgh but Prince Philip has two other titles: Earl of Merioneth and Baron Greenwich. All three titles were conferred upon the Duke in 1947 by King George VI.

8

The Duke is a qualified pilot. He gained his RAF wings in 1953, his helicopter wings in 1956 and his private pilot’s licence in 1959. Prince Philip has notched up 5,986 hours in 59 types of aircraft. The Duke’s final flight was on 11 August 1997 from Carlisle to the island of Islay, since when His Royal Highness has decided to stop flying.

9

The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award Scheme and International Award were founded by the Duke to introduce young people to new experiences, including physical, skills-based and community challenges. The scheme has been a huge international success. Since 1956, almost five and a half million young people from over 90 countries have taken part.

10

The Duke of Edinburgh is a prolific writer on environmental, technological, equestrian and animal subjects. His books include: Selected Speeches 1948-1955 (1957); Prince Philip Speaks (1960); Birds from Britannia (1962); Wildlife Crisis (with James Fisher, 1970); The Environmental Revolution (1978); Competition Carriage Driving (1982, rev. 1994); A Question of Balance (1982); Men, Machines and Sacred Cows (1984); A Windsor Correspondence (1984); Down to Earth (1988); Survival or Extinction: A Christian Attitude to the Environment (1989); Driving and Judging Dressage (1996); 30 Years On and Off The Box Seat (2004). Down to Earth is even available in Japanese.

11

Although he is a Privy Counsellor, the Duke has no constitutional role. Prince Philip is a member of the House of Lords, but has never spoken there owing to his proximity to The Queen, who remains politically neutral.

12

The Duke of Edinburgh is only one of a few consorts to reigning female Queens in British history. William III was co-Sovereign with Mary II, although she, as daughter of James II, was nearer the throne than him. The husband of Queen Anne was not given the title of King, but remained Prince George of Denmark. Prince Albert was created Prince Consort by Queen Victoria in 1857.

13

Care of the environment has been one of The Duke of Edinburgh’s greatest passions since long before it became a matter of general public concern. The Duke was the first President of World Wildlife Fund-UK from its foundation in 1961 until 1982, was International President of WWF (now World Wide Fund for Nature) from 1981 to 1996, and is now President Emeritus. His involvement has always been more than as a figurehead. He has served on the organisation’s boards and committees, given numerous addresses and speeches and on the subject, and visited WWF projects in over 40 countries on five continents.

14

The Duke of Edinburgh’s official livery colour is dark green, known as ‘Edinburgh Green’. It has been used for staff liveries - The Duke of Edinburgh’s page at the Coronation wore dark green and silver - and for private cars.

15

The Duke enjoys painting in oils. His Royal Highness describes it as ‘an absorbing challenge, for which I have nothing like enough time’.

16

The Duke of Edinburgh played a key role in the restoration of Windsor Castle after the great fire of 1992. He served as Chairman of the general Restoration Committee, one of the two committees supervising the rebuilding of the damaged rooms.

17

The Duke of Edinburgh was the first member of the Royal family to be interviewed on television. The interview took place in May 1961 when Prince Philip was interviewed by Richard Dimbleby, probably on a subject related to the City & Guilds of London, of which His Royal Highness has been President since 1951.

18

The islanders of Tanna, one of the islands in Vanuatu in the South West Pacific, worship The Duke of Edinburgh as a god. Vanuatu was formerly the Anglo-French Condominium of the New Hebrides, which Prince Philip visited in 1971.

19

The Duke of Edinburgh is Colonel of the Grenadier Guards. At Trooping the Colour he wears the uniform of Colonel of the Grenadier Guards and always accompanies The Queen, formerly on horseback and, since 2003, in the carriage with Her Majesty.

20

The Duke of Edinburgh has served as Chancellor of the Universities of Cambridge (1976-), Edinburgh (1952-), Salford (1967-91) and Wales (1948-76). He is also a Life Governor of King’s College, London, Patron of the London Metropolitan University and Visitor of the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology.

21

Prince Philip has put together a significant collection of contemporary paintings. These include a number of Australian paintings; around 150 pictures by contemporary Scottish artists bought for the Palace of Holyroodhouse; bird and wildlife paintings; and a specially commissioned series of views of Windsor and of castles in Germany.

22

In 1963 The Duke of Edinburgh founded a bag-piping trophy for the Pakistan Army. He offered to present the challenge cup after witnessing a display of massed bands of the Pakistan Army while visiting the country with The Queen in 1961.

23

Among unusual official presents received by Prince Philip are two pygmy hippopotami given by President Tubman of Liberia following his State Visit to England in 1961, and a giant porcelain grasshopper, presented by the French President in 1972.

24

The Queen’s Gallery, the public showcase for exhibitions of art from the Royal Collection, was built at the suggestion of The Duke of Edinburgh. Converted from the bomb-damaged Private Chapel at Buckingham Palace and opened to the public in July 1962, the Gallery has hosted exhibitions of all types of art. It was redesigned, and reopened by The Queen in her Golden Jubilee year in 2002.

25

Prince Philip still relishes adventurous challenges. In May 1985 His Royal Highness drove a coach and four across Morecambe Bay, Lancashire, as the tide was coming in. The feat involved negotiating both treacherous quicksands and the incoming water.

26

A Royal gun salute is fired on The Duke of Edinburgh’s birthday and the Union Jack is flown on government buildings from 8am until sunset.

27

Prince Philip is a Freeman of the cities of Acapulco; Belfast; Bridgetown; Barbados; Cardiff; Dar-es-Salaam; Tanzania; Edinburgh; Glasgow; Guadalajara; London; Los Angeles; Melbourne; Nairobi.

28

The Duke is Ranger of Windsor Great Park.

29

The Duke of Edinburgh has his own standard. The first three quarters show Prince Philip’s lineage: Denmark (lions and hearts); Greece (white cross on blue); Mountbatten (two black ‘pales’ on white). The fourth quarter contains the arms of the City of Edinburgh and represents his title.

30

Of the 75 prizes and medals associated with The Duke of Edinburgh, the most unusual is the Silver Wink award. Students at the University of Cambridge challenged Prince Philip to a tiddlywinks match in 1958. The Duke of Edinburgh appointed the Goons - the radio comedy group including Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan - as his Royal champions. The Silver Wink has been awarded by The Duke since 1961 to the winner of the inter-University Tiddlywinks Championships.

Much is said these days about the “clash of civilizations”. Once, we had dynastic feuds and wars between kings, and then the dreadful wars of peoples in the last century, but now, we are told, it is a fight between civilizations. As with most grand generalizations, there is an element of truth to this, and an element of falseness. But at any rate it shifts our focus from nations to “civilizations” and these civilizations can sometime be a tricky thing to pin down. For fifty years after the Second World War, the great divide of “us” and “them” was the “Free World” of the liberal democracies against the “Evil Empire” of marxian communism. With the disintegration of the Soviet Union, this dichotomy immediately collapsed, which has turned minds to factors a touch more cultural.

And so, we are now told of the existence of something called the “Anglosphere”, which is merely a lingo-istic word for what used to be described as the English-speaking countries. Britain, America, and what used to be described as the “white dominions” (for the sake of proprietry, let us here call them the “great dominions”) share to a great extent a common faith, a common history, a common ancestry, a common language, a common form of government, and perhaps even a common way of thinking. All this is certainly true, albeit to greatly varying degrees (I’ve had cab drivers in Fife who speak a tongue which one would be pressed to describe as English, while I have neighbors in Westchester who I doubt have a single ancestor who was a subject of the Crown).

Yes, there is much that unites the English-speaking peoples and these are things which ought to be preserved, maintained, and celebrated unto the ages. But there are some devotées of the English-speaking world who are not satisfied with having and enjoying this unity. Rather, they urge we go that extra step further into the beyond (which, as we traditionalists know, is usually the one step off the precipice) and demand that the unity of the English-speaking peoples take a political form. There ought to be an Anglosphere Union just as there is a European Union, and there ought to be an Anglosphere Parliament and why not an Anglosphere government while were at it? We’re all really just one people anyhow, aren’t we? Wouldn’t this be a great development in the onward progress of English-speaking supremacy?

In a word: no. The idea of English-speaking political unity is one which deserves both our scorn and our ridicule. The particular genius to that which unites Britain, America, and the great dominions is the very fact that it is apolitical and nongovernmental. Taking these loose but genuine and organic ties of blood and culture and forging it into a political union can only do damage to the constituent peoples of the “Anglosphere”. Experience has shown that the existence of high structures quite often leads to the centralization of power. If the English-speaking world needs anything in the realm of government and politics, it is not yet another level of goverment to which to “pass the buck” but rather the decentralization of power away from London, Ottawa, Washington, Canberra, and Wellington. An Anglosphere Union would almost certainly constitute a threat to our liberties and present a distinct challenge to the principle of solidarity. Do the supports of this hare-brained scheme actually think that should an Anglosphere Union be created, it will be run by Somerset yeomen, Australian pig farmers, ernest Kansans, and aristocratic Highlanders? Of course not. It would be run by the same horrific, banal cast(e) of characters who run Congress and Parliament. Do we really want to give enemies of Anglo traditionalism like George Bush and Tony Blair even larger domains to lord over? They already act like they rule the world; let us not dignify their bloated egos.

Now, there are some areas which greater cooperation between our peoples would be quite desirable. Given the amount of trade and interchange between our countries, a customs union might be a good idea. (I hate putting those blasted custom forms on packages to England!). The fact that the U.K., America, and Australia are in three different DVD regions is an affront to common sense and decency (but then I suppose the very idea of DVD regions is itself an affront). Given that we share many of the same customs, tradition, and history, allowing a prefential option for visas and work permits would be a good idea. But these are things which can be done without Anglosphere Union and indeed which, if enacted, we must be on guard to make sure they do not constitute embryonic centralization.

Democracies and republics (be they monarchic, presidential, or otherwise) can function marvelously so long as they are properly proportioned. Vermont, New Hampshire, and Prince Edward Island are of a scale which would prove quite conducive to democracy. I’ve sometimed fancied Newfoundland would make a fine principality. But when applied to a large area with a large population (especially one with debased elites such as our own), it becomes inimical to the preservation of ancient rights and privileges and a threat to traditional culture. To enact democracy on a global scale, or on any large scale, will inevitably result in some shape or form of dictatorship. (Witness, for example, the almost supreme power of the metropolitan elites over the countryside in the ‘democratic’ Britain of today).

So let us put aside ridiculous notions of Anglosphere Union. They not only constitute a marked departure from the tradition of our forefathers, but they present a direct challenge to the very best aspects of the English-speaking peoples which we seek to preserve. Let the ties that join us be ones of freedom, and not of bondage.

Despite the peaceful separation of Slovakia from Bohemia and Moravia over ten years ago, these three regions will forever be stuck in the minds of many as Czechoslovakia. It is a word that has the ring of artifice to it, and so it is no surprise to learn that Czechoslovakia was a creation of the twentieth century, and met its own demise just a few years short of that century’s end. Famously described by Chamberlain as “a far-off land of which we know little”, the history and heritage of these lands are made more readily appreciable in “Great Country Houses of the Czech Republic and Slovakia”, by Lord Michael Pratt, son of the 5th Marquess Camden. The content is actually the excerpted first section of Pratt’s previous “Great Country Houses of Central Europe”, which the splendid Abbeville Press is now bringing out in three separate editions covering Hungary and Poland respectively, and, here, the oft-coupled Czech Republic and Slovakia.

We Anglos can perhaps be forgiven for not having already obtained an in-depth history of the region. (Ours in an age where a knowledge of the past is poorly valued). Pratt solves this quandary for us by providing a sizeable introduction to serve as a primer. In forty pages, the events of over a millennium are described, and somehow the reader completes it without feeling short-changed. It provides the solid foundation on which the rest of the book is built, for the history of these houses is the history of these lands, and vice-versa. The acknowledgments page alone reads like a Who’s Who of the great and good of Mitteleuropa: Kinsky, Lobkowicz, Thun-Hohenstein, and of course Schwarzenberg, among others. The book is a testament to the great heritage of these lands — unbroken, in many cases, for centuries until their entire civilization collapsed under the weight of the World Wars.

Some of the houses depicted in the book were already known to this reviewer, such as the splendid castle of Krummau (Cesky Krumlov) and the slightly-garish Schloß Frauenberg (Hluboká), architecturally a second-cousin (once-removed) of Windsor Castle. Many, however, were new discoveries, such as Valtice and Lednice.

Once the seat of the Liechtensteins, these two Moravian houses are an adjacent duo of the many residences of that powerful family whose eponymous principality is the last political remnant of the Holy Roman Empire. Here at Valtice (pictured above, from the book), Prince Karl Eusebius, the head of the Liechtenstein family from 1627 to 1684, founded the princely gallery which became one of the greatest collections of art in the world. His interest in the study of architecture was sufficient enough to merit writing a treatise on the subject, primarily for the edification of his son and heir, Johann Adam Andreas. This teaching bore fruit when Johann Adam Andreas succeeded his father, as the new prince purchased a Vienna palace from the Kaunitz family which he then redesigned, as well as building the substantial summer palace in Rossau, just outside the imperial city. (He had already built the many-columned chateau of Plumenau, with its striking hillside location, during his youth). The prince also added the works of Rubens and van Dyck to the princely collection.

The nineteenth century saw the rebirth of Valdice’s neighboring palace of Lednice. Towards the beginning of the century, the land between the two castles was turned into an ‘English garden’, a completely designed setting following a more naturalistic form than the more formal French-style gardens which had previously been the rage. The English theme was expanded when Prince Alois Josef II, in 1845, commissioned the architect Georg Wingelmüller to redesign Lednice, like the Schwarzenbergs’ Hluboka, along English Gothic lines.

Lednice and Valtice have thankfully been maintained in a sound condition, but not so the little chateau of Veltrusy. Sitting, somewhat dilapidated, on the road from Prague to Dresden, this was the seat of the Chotek family, from which sprang Sophie, the countess so beloved of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. It was their double-assassination in Sarajevo, 1914, that sparked the beginning of the end of the old order. What one world war severely damaged, another killed off. With the Communist takeover of eastern and central Europe, the great landed estates of these ancient families were confiscated. The Liechtensteins had the wisdom to move the great art collection from Valdice to their own neutral Vaduz before the Red Army dropped the Iron Curtain dividing the continent. But chateaux are not transferable objects, and all the great houses which fell behind that Iron Curtain became property of the state.

In the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall, a good many properties have been restored to their owners, but this restitution has sadly often been tainted by ethnic rivalries. Under the imperial crown of the Hapsburgs, Germans, Slavs, and Magyars lived amongst each other, in a complex and intertwined society. Post-communist governments have often proved less devoted to restoring properties to their rightful owners when those heirs are ethnic Germans than if they are of the dominant ethnicity in any of the numerous modern states. A house without its proprietary family is lacking an animating spirit. Sitting empty and under the keeping of the state, it can only be beloved by architects, tourists, and a handful of knowledgeable romantics. With a family, a great country house has a spirit, a heritage, and a living tradition to keep, maintain, and develop it through the ages. Furthermore, many of these noble families have for centuries been the embodiment of the pan-European ideal which the national governments of today purport to uphold. With the scholarly text of Michael Pratt and the graceful photographs of Gerhard Trumler, any student of history or art will appreciate, enjoy, and learn from this book, while perhaps mourning quite how fallen our once-great civilization has become and how far we are from recovering it.

I feel a little explanation is necessary. Until the end of February, I was destined for the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and a few years in the British Army. I am now embarking on (I hope) a three-year stint in South Africa, giving lectures to tourists on the battlefields of the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879. Quite a change. Sitting here in a coffee shop outside London’s Liverpool Street Station, it still hasn’t quite sunk in.

The reactions I have received from friends and family having made this decision have varied from the vaguely positive to the “hmmm… interesting” as well as the strongly negative; one wouldn’t be surprised to learn that, while my peers tended (rather strongly) to the former, the older generation tended towards the latter. This division of opinion is, of course, less than surprising and is somewhat symptomatic of the rapidly changing world in which we live. It may be equally unsurprising to note that those of my friends who now find themselves as auditors, bankers, or any other form of City worker, are, having extolled the virtues of their large salaries, secretly jealous. Yet while the opinions of friends and family are often important and useful, there are some decisions one can only make on one’s own, and (perhaps more importantly) when one has nothing to tie one down. It took six somewhat troubled weeks for me to make this decision, but having made it, the relief and excitement is palpable. If I have made a mistake, the mistake shall be mine.

It is very easy to imagine that, in these days of rapid travel and communications, the 5,000-odd miles between Rorke’s Drift and Scotland won’t really matter. A combination of e-mails, Facebook (of course), internet banking, and non-stop flights will keep me in touch with friends and family and allow me to hang on to all that is important to me at home. It is easy and comforting to imagine that in three years time I shall return to the UK having maintained my friends and kept abreast of all their goings-on. I very much hope this will be the case, but I can’t help wondering if this will be the true and final test of the “Facebook friendship”.

And so, as I set off to South Africa, I leave behind my family, my friends, and the United Kingdom, my home of 23 years. I also leave a country with the fifth largest economy in the world which provides its citizens with free health care, relatively low taxes (or so we’re told) and few regulations (apparently). I am leaving these things and setting off to a country where statistics tell us there are 53 murders a day, including, to the world’s great detriment, the murder of my friend and employer, David Rattray. The big question, I suppose, is why I have decided to make such a move. Taking these things at face value and if one is to believe the reports of the great dangers of travelling in South Africa, it may appear that I have made rather a ridiculous trade. However, as with many things, face value tell a very one-sided story of what is probably Africa’s most promising country. Despite having collectively spent nearly a year in South Africa over the past five years, I still find the country somewhat perplexing. Many of the complexities of this place are often, affectionately or otherwise, explained away with the phrase: “that’s Africa for you”. It is an all-encompassing and often throw-away comment which is frequently used to explain many events which might otherwise be cause for concern.

However, the many social and cultural complexities of South Africa cannot be written off so casually. At first glance, the newly arrived tourist would be forgiven for thinking that the high numbers of unemployed black people, when compared to the far fewer numbers of generally much more wealthy white people, is an on-going symptom of the apartheid days. South Africa, in every way however, is no longer simply a country of black and white. Under the skin there is a somewhat confused mix of cultures, of skilled and unskilled and of rich and poor. To this day, for example, the cultural and social differences between the Zulu and the Xhosa peoples have maintained a certain distance between the two, even in government.

The efforts of the post-apartheid governments to off-set the problem of black economic inequality are beginning to take effect. The black petrol station attendants are not there because it is deemed demeaning for a white man, they are there because otherwise they would be unemployed. Black empowerment has led to a large number of upwardly mobile black people in all stages of society and this in turn seems to be encouraging the younger generations to advance themselves through education and their own determination. Driving through Zululand before school, tourists are often staggered by the huge numbers of clean and smartly dressed schoolchildren of all ages walking anything up to ten or fifteen miles to get to school on time. Compare this with the average British teenager, often unkempt and unwilling, and one has to wonder where British society has gone wrong.

Despite their desire to learn, these South African school children are by no means guaranteed a financially or even physically safe future. The high rate of often violent crime is well-known around the world, and is a result of the rampant unemployment and poverty and augmented by the post-apartheid collapse of effective policing. The townships around Johannesburg and every other city in South Africa are filled with young black men looking for work. The rural areas they have left are devoid of any real employment (other than tourism); but then of course, so are the townships. Those who are employed are either lucky or have been in the townships for many years; of the new arrivals who remain unemployed, some return home and some turn to crime.

The resulting high rates of crime are difficult to ignore, particularly if one gets lost in Johannesburg. But as with any other country in the world, common sense and a basic grasp of map-reading will keep the average tourist out of harm’s way in a country which has a huge amount to offer. Having said that, there are few South African families who haven’t been directly or indirectly affected by crime. It is also true to say that a high percentage of these crimes are committed by black people. This is, of course, a direct result of poverty which is not, in my opinion, a symptom of racism, but simply of relative numbers. Some white Africans will go on to say that black Africans are, to put it politely, lacking in drive: “that is Africa and that is why we’re here”. Well I am not yet in a position to comment. That’s why I’m here.

The New York-based France-Amérique, America’s premier French-language publication, recently merged with it’s west coast rival, the Journal Français of San Francisco. The two papers were united under the France-Amérique banner in the April 12, 2007 edition. The new title, redesigned in a tabloid format, features the travel and cultural coverage of Journal Français while continuing to print content from Le Figaro, the main right-leaning French newspaper of which France-Amérique was the international edition.

Louis Kyle, Publisher and CEO of parent company FrancePress LLC, told the press that France-Amérique “will continue to feature an even wider assortment of timely news analysis and features from our team of distinguished journalists based in the United States and France as well as relevant news from Le Figaro.” FrancePress revamped its glossy monthly France Today last year, while hiring the reknowned J. C. Suares to reshape the fortnightly France-Amérique. Suares previously worked on the redesigns of New York magazine, Publisher’s Weekly, and Hollywood’s Variety trade newspaper.

The new France-Amérique, which will continue to be edited from New York, features new sections. La Quinzaine (”the fortnight”) contains news articles from Le Figaro as well as original content depicting events of the previous two weeks. Food, travel, literature, film, history, and fashion are covered in the new Culture section, while the round-up of American events for Francophones and Francophiles continues as La Vie Franco-Americaine. The Accent Français column on French grammar and language from Journal Français is continued in the new paper.

Under its veteran editor Pascale Richard in New York, France-Amérique now also has bureaus in San Francisco and Paris. Richard said of the merger that his “team of full-time and independent journalists from across America as well as in France is excited about bringing the kind of news analysis and feature and lifestyle stories that will delight both our native French readers as well as our American Francophile friends and French language teachers and academics across the U.S.A.”

With the increase in size, the cover price of France-Amérique jumps from $1.50 to $3.50, while a year’s subscription of twenty-three issues costs $50.

Sadly, France-Amérique’s new nameplate is no longer in the same distinctive typeface of Le Figaro, nor does it any longer proudly proclaim “Édition internationale du Figaro” but rather describes the paper as “le journal français des États-Unis”.

America’s French-language media began with the Gazette Française et Americaine, printed in New York from 1796 until 1799. The weekly Courrier des États-Unis began in 1828, was printed daily from 1851 to 1931, and later merged into France-Amérique. France-Amérique itself was founded in 1943 as the American mouthpiece of General de Gaulle’s Free French government-in-exile.

THE FIRST OF MAY beheld the three-hundredth anniversary of Great Britain but the Scottish National Party are planning to ensure the United Kingdom’s days are numbered. Labour politicians across the country are fearful these days, but that fear is most palpable to the north of the Tweed, where on May 3, two days after the anniversary, voters made the SNP the largest single party in the Scottish parliament; just one seat more than Labour. The result: control of the Scottish Executive hangs in the balance while the five parties now represented in the parliament squabble over who will sit in Bute House, the official residence of Scotland’s First Minister. One could be forgiven for thinking that the church bells of Edinburgh toll for Britain.

Many Englishmen find the position of the SNP mystifying. Scotland holds a somewhat privileged position within Great Britain. The Scottish Parliament has the final say over some vital devolved matters, such as education, health, agriculture, and the administration of justice. In England however, these matters remain the business of the Parliament at Westminster. This has led to the anomaly known as the West Lothian Question, first posed by Tom Dalyell, whereby Scottish MPs have the right to vote on purely English matters.

For example, Scottish Labour MPs provided the Government’s margin of victory in the passage of the Higher Education Bill in 2004. Along with their Welsh Labour colleagues, they were also largely responsible for seeing the Government home on the foundation hospitals vote in 2003. The remarkable sight of the Government making law in England, contrary to the wishes of a majority of English MPs, was hardly likely to convince the neutral observer that it is the Scots who are “oppressed”.

Far from being the disenfranchised serfs to an English super-majority, the Scots and the Welsh are political kingmakers in Britain. Michael Howard’s Conservatives won a slight lead of 60,000 more votes in the popular vote in England over the Labour Party at the last general election in 2005. The results were far more one-sided in Scotland and Wales — out of 99 Parliamentary seats in Scotland and Wales, the two countries sent 70 Labour MPs to Westminster. If there is a Labour Government in Britain today, it is because the Scots and the Welsh wanted one.

By and large, the Scots have been rewarded for their loyalty to Labour. The retention of the Barnett formula, a mechanism which automatically adjusts some areas of British public spending, directs more public money per capita to Scotland than to England. The direct result of this is that the Scottish Parliament has been able to introduce free personal and nursing care for elderly people living in residential homes, while no such provision exists for the elderly in England or Wales.

Under such favourable circumstances relative to the English, it seems difficult to understand why so many Scots have signalled their intentions to vote for a party whose stated reason for existence is to engineer the United Kingdom’s demise. Two polls in the last fortnight, courtesy of YouGov and Populus, place the projected Nationalist share of the vote at 37% and 34%, respectively. If the SNP does win a little over a third of the vote that would represent a startling increase over the 23.8% won in the last set of Scottish Parliament elections in 2003. Long standing issues such as the true ownership of the revenues of the North Sea oil fields, for example, hardly seem likely to account for the renaissance of Scottish nationalism.

The Scottish National Party has fought an energetic campaign, under the capable stewardship of Alex Salmond. The party has cleverly given on-the-fence voters (many of whom may vote SNP merely as a vehicle for kicking Labour out of government) the reassurance that a referendum on Scottish independence would not be the first item on the agenda once the SNP are in power. On the other hand, Mr. Salmond has once again reassured the core of the Nationalist movement of his commitment to the dissolution of Britain by insisting that a referendum does take place.

The continuing inability of the Conservatives to mount any sort of substantial recovery in Scotland has left Mr. Salmond with ample room to manoeuvre in order to woo voters disaffected with Jack McConnell’s Labour coalition with the Liberal Democrats. Useful endorsements from prominent Scottish businessmen such as Sir Tom Farmer, founder of the Kwik-fit car maintenance company, and former Royal Bank of Scotland chairman, Sir George Mathewson, have been doubly effective in presenting a moderate image thanks to abject Tory weakness. Even prominent social conservatives, such as millionaire Brian Souter, have abandoned the Tories and signed up as backers of the traditionally centre-left SNP. Souter, who led the unsuccessful campaign fighting the repeal of Section 28, the law prohibiting the promotion of homosexuality in schools, recently donated £500,000 to the party coffers.

But perhaps most importantly, the party has tried hard to demonstrate credibility as a party of the centre left in the post-devolution environment. In the light of Labour’s moves towards privatisation of some areas of the public services, the highly unpopular military intervention in Iraq, and widespread allegations of corruption reaching all the way up to Downing Street itself, the SNP has responded to the public’s desire for a purer left-leaning party in Scotland. It is no coincidence that the SNP received its first donation from a trade union this month. Other unions will surely follow the Fire Brigades’ Union in dissolving their historic ties with Labour, in a slow but damning repudiation of Blairism north of the border.

It is certainly more cheery to conclude that the resurgence of the Scottish Nationalists can be attributed to justified disillusion with Mr. Blair rather than with Great Britain. Nobody would blame the Scots for wanting to give Labour a good kicking. However, Britannia cannot rest easy while the SNP continues riding high in the polls. There is a certain danger that the loud voice of Scottish Nationalism might wake the large beast of English nationalism–a prospect which should keep Britannia up at night for fear of her survival.

An Afrikaans song lauding an old Boer general has become a surprise hit among South Africa’s Afrikaner people, raising the ire of the country’s liberal intelligentsia. ‘De la Rey’ by folk rock singer Bok van Blerk has proved so popular it is now sung at rugby matches, school sporting events, and wherever Afrikaners gather. 180,000 copies were sold in six months, and former president Nelson Mandela has hailed van Blerk as his “favourite singer”. Nonetheless, the song has sparked controversy and perhaps even outrage among liberal intellectuals, who disapprove of the perceived undertone of the song as an Afrikaner call-to-arms. The song’s lyrics cry out “De la Rey, De la Rey, sal jy die boere kom lei?” [De la Rey, De la Rey, will you come to lead the Boers?], calling for the long-dead commando leader of the Boer War to come and lead Afrikaners today. The fact that the singing of the song is often accompanied by the waving of South Africa’s old Union Flag, has hightened the leftists’ ire. But who exactly is this “De la Rey” of whom Afrikaners young and old now proudly sing?

Jacobus Herculaas de la Rey is more often known as General Koos de la Rey. His grandfather, the patriarch of all the de la Reys in South Africa, had settled in the country from Utrecht in the Netherlands. With countless other Dutch-speaking colonists, the de la Rey family took part in the Great Trek into the South African wilderness, in search of a new land free from British rule. It was in 1847 at Doornfontein in the Orange Free State that Koos de la Rey was born. Like many of his fellow Boers, he grew to be a deeply religious man, and had ten children after marrying and settling down on his farm.

The Great Trek did not solve the Boers’ problems, as disputes between Afrikaners and Britons continued, augmenting severely after the discovery of diamonds and gold in the two Afrikaner republics. Thousands of British colonists from the Cape Colony shifted to the Transvaal in hopes of striking it rich. Fearful of their influence, President Paul Kruger of the South Africa Republic (as the Transvaal was officially known) made sure to deny these “uitlanders” (foreigners) any political rights or say in government.

Koos de la Rey was a prominent member of the faction in the Volksraad (parliament) opposing President Kruger. They argued instead for a conciliatory policy towards the uitlanders. De la Rey argued passionately against the brewing conflict with Great Britain, but when war finally erupted, many were surprised to find De la Rey fiercely committed to war’s prosecution. In battle, he emerged as an effective general, and became known as a leader of the first commando units ever assembled.

De la Rey was also well-known for his chivalry and decency in conflict, even towards the enemy who burnt Boer farms and starved Boer wives and children in concentration camps (another world first from the Boer War). When the British Lieutenant-General Lord Metheun was captured by De la Rey, he proved so wounded in the battle that the rudimentary medical aid the Boers had at hand would prove ineffective. De la Rey, realizing that only expert British medical military attention could save the Baron’s life, released him and returned him to the British lines.

Meeting in parley with Lord Kitchener in 1902, the two formed a strong friendship that helped bring about the peace talks which finally ended the Anglo-Boer War at Vereeniging later that year. De la Rey spent the aftermath of the devastating conflict touring Europe with his fellow generals Louis Botha and Christiaan de Wet raising money for Boers impoverished by the scorched-earth policy of the British.

Years later, when the First World War erupted, General Botha sent soldiers of the now-united South Africa to seize the neighboring German colony of Sud-West Afrika (today’s Namibia). A great many Afrikaners were angered at the prospect of going to war on behalf of the British Empire, of which they had become a part, agains the German Empire, which had been sympathetic to the Boer cause during the previous war. Military officers threatened to resign their commissions or, worse, engage in mutiny. The Afrikaner officers summoned the old Boer general to the Potchefstroom military camp. At the same time, the vicious Foster Gang of thieves and murderers struck across the country. The police had set up roadblocks hoping to catch the criminal gang after one of their exploits. De la Rey, in his rush to get to Potchefstroom and quell tensions sped through one of the roadblocks. A policeman shot at his car, striking and mortally wounding General de la Rey.

How then did he come to be the subject of a folk song which has alledgedly roused Afrikaners from their slumber? Could it be as accidental as the rhyme of his name? Sean Else and Johan Vorster own the record company that produces Bok van Blerk. Else had asked Vorster to write a song about any of the old generals from the Boer War. “You can’t make Kemp rhyme”, admits Vorster. “You can’t make Beyers rhyme, much les some other surnames.” And so, Koos de la Rey, whose status as a peace-loving warrior was a welcome addendum to his rhymable name.

The song is written from the perspective of a Boer soldier in the field and talks of “my house and my farm/ burned to ashes,/ so they could catch us”. The Boer is fightining “Because my wife and child are perishing in a concentration camp/ and the Khakis’ [British] reprisal is poured over a nation that will rise again”.

The song speaks to the confusion surrounding the place of the Afrikaners in the larger South African community. Afrikaners were from 1948 until the end of apartheid in 1994 the top tribe in South Africa, excluding non-whites completely and politically dominating the English, the country’s other major group of European origin. Now they, along with English South Africans, find themselves being replaced, sometimes arbitrarily, from the top positions in the country by Zulus, Xhosa, and other black South Africans. As in the United States, racial discrimination has been written into the law as ‘affirmative action’.

“There is an element here I think of a search for identity, of a search for pride”, says newspaper columnist and author Max du Preez. “They had to go back a hundred years to find a hero to praise because there was nothing in between. After the Anglo-Boer War there’s nobody in Afrikaner history that you can glorify, apart from maybe [rugby players] Frik du Preez and Mannetjies Roux.”

However, editor Tim du Plessis argues the song is part of the process of Afrikaners becoming part of a greater South Africa. “Many people in the Afrikaans community are these days looking at the country and they say ‘I don’t feel at home in this country anymore’ and now… this very song about their past about a very respected and almost a revered figure from their past a very catchy tune and they say ‘I listen to this song and I experience a sense of belonging’”.

“It’s indicative of the migration of the Afrikaans community from the old South Africa to the new South Africa,” du Plessis argues. “It has to do with the fact that people in the Afrikaans community are starting to find their voices and this is especially in the younger generation”.

Sociologist Dr. Andries Bezuidenhout, however, is not impressed with van Blerk’s song. “In a way this is about finding victimhood for Afrikaners. They’re seen as these perpetrators of history and what the Anglo Boer War gives them is victimhood… it’s trying to get away from ideas of guilt and historical guilt.” Dr. Bezuidenhout himself, as ‘Roof’, is one half of Afrikaans rock duo Brixton Moord en Roof Orkes.

“The parents are the ones who would have become the mayors, the ministers, the CEOs and they feel that that’s been taken away from them. They’re bitter, and their kids don’t remember apartheid, they didn’t grow up under apartheid so they get this nostalgia from their parents about the good past and that’s poison. That’s a poisonous combination. So I think that in part explains the deep, deep feelings of insecurity and a sense being threatened”.

Tim du Plessis disagrees with Dr. Bezuidenhout’s analysis. “It’s unfair on the Afrikaans community whenever they want to do something that is an expression of their cultural identity to say they have a rightwing backlash here. Is there a big problem are there Afrikaners mobilising again. I think it’s unfair. It simply not happening”.

The singing of ‘De la Rey’ is not only often accompanied the waving of the old South African flag, but is frequently followed by impromptu renderings of Die Stem, the old national anthem. But both the flag and the anthem, while now predominantly associated with the apartheid, predate the imposition of apartheid in 1948. Indeed, South African soldiers, including the great Field Marshal Jan Christiaan Smuts, fought Nazism under the very flag which opponents of ‘De la Rey’ claim is a symbolic legacy of racism. Van Blerk himself has opposed to waving the old flag, and often sings ‘De la Rey’ wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the current flag of the republic. “It makes me a little angry,” Mr. van Blerk admits, “but I can’t say what people should wear or what flags they can carry”.

Again, however, Max du Plessis disagrees, claiming that Mr. van Blerk and Mr. Else, the song’s writer, are “clearly so politically naïve and now they can’t very well turn their back on the product… There’s a strong commercial influence and they don’t seem to fully realise that there is the potential for this thing to be so hijacked to lead to things they don’t agree with”.

But is the song actually a call-to-arms and an implicit incitement to violence? Following the surprise popularity of the song, the South African Ministry of Arts and Culture went so far as to issue a warning reminding that incitement to treason is against the law.

Kallie Kriel of AfriForum, an Afrikaner advocacy group, derides claims that ‘De la Rey’ is a call to violence as “total rubbish”. “The song represents a reawakening of Afrikaner pride,” Mr. Kriel said. “It is not the reaction to the song that worries me but the reaction to the support the song has received which is alarming”.

Devotees of the song have pointed out that Jacob Zuma, the controversial deputy chariman of the country’s ruling African National Congress party, makes use of a song called ‘Umshini Wam!’ or ‘My Machine Gun’. Mr. Zuma, not frequently an ally of the Afrikaners, has come out in support of the song. “Umshini Wam is a song of my history,” he says. “Why should Afrikaners not remember their heroes?”

But Mr. Kreil believes that the ANC government, of which Mr. Zuma is a leader, is trying to erase the historical and cultural influence of Afrikaners and Afrikaans-speakers (about half of whom are racially-mixed).

“Afrikaners are indigenous to South Africa and we have to find a place here but the government has replaced the reconciliation of the Mandela era with retaliation.”

Mr. Kriel cited the “Africanizing” of South African placenames, changing the traditional names of towns and cities to new, invented names in native languages. “By erasing all Afrikaner names, they are essentially sending the message that we are not Africans”.

“You cannot expect an entire culture to fall away,” one young woman told a reporter from VOA Radio. “That’s why you have major music festivals - a rebirth in the cultural aspects or the aspects of the Afrikaner culture.”

Journalist Diane de Beer recently reported one such manifestation of an Afrikaner cultural revival, the Klein Karoo Arts Festival. “Perhaps the most poignant picture of the night was a young black boy a few rows in front of me,” Ms. de Beer wrote. “Surrounded by a group of white friends, he sang with as much fervour as the rest of the gang”.

I am a European. This may sound rather strange, given that I was born in New York, have lived most of my life in Los Angeles, and will be buried in my family plot in Massachusetts. The first Coulombes to arrive in the New World came in the seventeenth century, and my immediate ancestors have served in the armed forces of the United States in every conflict this country has been involved in since at least 1900. I myself have so served, and once upon a time swore to defend the U.S. constitution from “all enemies, foreign and domestic.” Nevertheless, I am indeed a European.

The fact is that, save for some Indian blood (visible in my Coulombe cousins, though not in myself), my ancestry hails from the mother continent. Mixed French, Austrian, English, Russian, Scots, Irish, and various others to be sure, but nevertheless all European. None of the languages I speak, however poorly Canadian French, Yankee English, a fractured Viennese, and Los Angeles Mexican street Spanish can be considered indigenous to the Americas, and as a result, all of the arts to enjoyed in the languages I understand have European origins from Shakespeare to Piaf. In the State of California, where I reside, although the laws covering land, water, and mineral rights point up our origins as a colony of His Most Catholic Majesty of Spain, the rest of our governance, with its panoply of governor, legislature, judiciary, counties, sheriffs, mayors, coroners and on and on, show the English origins of the better part of our law and institutions. Above all, I belong to a religion centered in Rome, whose current head said shortly after his accession, all Catholics are in some way Romans. It is unlikely that he was referring either to Rome, New York, or Rome, Texas.

Of course, I am not alone in this position. It is true of the larger proportion of my fellow Americans ethnically, and virtually all of us culturally. It is especially true (despite all the hype) of the Blacks in this country, who have no real, identifiable ties to Africa except mere genetics. If anything, they are, save the Indians, the most completely American cultural element in the population. But that too makes them Europeans. The truth is, pace the Anti-Colonial League, that we are the most successful of colonies, having succeeded so tremendously that we have dominated all our former metropoles, and their neighbours. Moreover, most of us have forgotten our origins, and unconsciously think of ourselves as autogenetic.

But on a deeper level still, we know that it is not true. Old Europe still keeps a hold on our imaginations, no matter how much we may try to deny it. Moreover, the fact remains that none of us without tribal ancestry can stand on a bit of land in this country and say, my people were here a thousand years ago. The equally unconscious ability of Europeans to do precisely that (and of those few Americans who visit to do likewise) quietly influences the relationship between the two sides of the Atlantic Canadians, of course, are somewhat more aware of their origins, which gives them a separate mental universe entirely.

For my own part, a large segment of my work as a writer has been to imply the truth: that we Americans are Europeans separated by time and space from our origins. But as with any colonial, it is not the Europe of Tony Blair, Bertie Ahern, Jacques Chirac, and rest of the “generation of ‘68″ gone to seed that I have in mind. There is a reason why the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries can still be heard in the French, English, and Spanish spoken in various remote spots in the Americas. It is because we were settled by a different Europe.

The continent that produced our ancestors was the Europe of Dryden, Cervantes, and Moliere — the realm of chivalry and guilds, shrines and legends, for all that (in the northern half, anyway) this was collapsing at a more or less speedy rate. In a word, it was from Christendom that our fathers came. Echoes of this can be found in the more profound religiosity that characterizes most of the Western Hemisphere — even if much of that religiosity is Calvinism or sects still more bizarre. It has only in recent memory — the 1960s — that our elites have become more or less atheistic, and determined to impose their creeds upon the rest of us (a phenomenon to which neither Quebec or Latin America have been immune, although in the latter case it is still somewhat moderated).

In any case, the malaise that has infected Europe since 1789, and has become more or less triumphant since 1945 and especially 1968, has not gone nearly as far in the United States. In Europe herself, by way of contrast, American religious attitudes are well-nigh incomprehensible; public displays of religious ceremonial are quite common in Europe (although her current leaders do try to suppress or limit them when possible) to a degree unheard of in the United States; yet the personal faith that is a sine qua non in an American politician is considered rather strange on the other side of the ocean. Marriage and birth statistics reveal that such personal faith is also increasingly rare among the European citizenry at large (a lack noticeably absent, however, in her growing Muslim population).

The altar was one of the two foundations upon which Europe rested: the other was the throne. Of course, since 1776, we have done our best on this side of the water to minimise its contributions to our nationhood; Latin Americans have been doing so since the 1820s, and Canadian politicians and media folk got in on the act in the 1960s. Yet, as stated, all of our institutions come to us from Europe — but from a Royal Europe. The same anti-monarchical slant infected Europe in 1789, and received heavy boosts in 1918 and 1945. But European republics still house the dreary old politicians they call presidents in the royal palaces, surround them with more or less cut-rate royal pageantry (guards, households, and orders of knighthood), and pretend that somehow the whole charade has something to with “rule by the people” as though the general mass of the people were able to live as well as the politicians that batten off them! Much the same is true in Latin America, where current chiefs of state continue to use many of the appurtenances of the long-vanished viceroys.

For all of the differences between old Europe and her children, however, there can be no doubt that, despite the end of colonialism and the attempts at self-assertion of local politicians in such nations as Australia, Europe really extends from San Francisco to Vladivostok, and from North Cape to Cape Town and Buenos Aires. Like it or not, we are stuck with each other. But culturally and religiously, the health of the periphery still depends upon that of the Mother Continent.

Europe’s health, over here, is frequently spoken of in terms of the European Union. But just what is that Union, and how true is it to the European soul, of which Hilaire Belloc once famously remarked that, “the Faith is Europe, and Europe is the Faith?”

One must say, given the disastrous course of European history in the twentieth century, that the origins of the European Union were promising enough. Solid Christians like Jean Monnet, Paul-Henri Spaak, Robert Schuman, Konrad Adenauer, and Alcide de Gasperi hoped to pull out of the ruins of their countries a new Europe — rooted deeply in the religion and best traditions of her past, but freed of the national hatreds and social conflicts that had spilled so much of the best of her blood from 1914 to 1945. It was a noble dream, reflected in such efforts as the Karlspreis, the annual award by the city fathers of Aachen, Charlemagne’s Aix-la-Chapelle, to the individual who, in their opinion, had best demonstrated the “European idea” that year. In time, the ACP (Atlantic-Caribbean-Pacific) scheme was intended to allow the former imperial masters to aid their one-time colonies in a way consonant with those nations’ self-respect. Moreover, European unity would allow Europe to play an effective role in world affairs, independent of both the United States and the Soviet Union. Yet at the same time, the principle of “subsidiarity” would allow towns, counties, and provinces (or their local equivalent) far more freedom to run their own affairs. Successive Popes seconded this goal — and came to prefer it to the older vision enunciated by such as Salazar, Franco, and any number of Latin American rulers.

Alas, the reality was to be far different from what either pontiffs or founding politicians had hoped. For what we are faced with in the European Union of today is quite another thing, entirely. Far from the sort of Europe envisaged by its founders, the EU is, to begin with, ever more anti-Christian, as the abortive Constitution’s preamble and the Buttiglione case point up. Non-marital unions, contraception, abortion, euthanasia — anything calculated to worsen Europe’s already plummeting demographics — are encouraged at every turn by the EU. Instead of subsidiarity, local farmers, artisans, and regular folk throughout the Union find themselves ever more strangled by the Brussels bureaucracy: what seems to be emerging is a personally oppressive superstate upon a foundation of equally annoying national bureaucracies. Perhaps making up for this has been the EU’s ineffectiveness in foreign affairs: the ACP idea is being abandoned, having done little to ameliorate Third World poverty and less to address bad governance there. Bosnia and Kosovo pointed up the New Europe’s inability to address even nearby conflicts effectively. Needless to say, the U.S. took little notice of Europe when dealing with Iraq — alas, perhaps, to no one’s ultimate advantage. The only thing more pitiful than the awarding of the Karlspreis to Tony Blair in 1999 was Bill Clinton’s reception of it the following year.

As a result, despite the best efforts of a well-healed public relations machine, and the views of most European political parties, the EU has yet to win the affection of the common man in Europe. Instead, most folk respond with derision. Yet despite polls and plebiscites, the thing appears to be on its way to commanding ever-greater power over a supine continent. Since the 1980s, a common explanation was to blame the next country over for the EU. British blamed the French, Frenchmen blamed the Germans, Germans blamed the Italians, and so forth. In recent years this sort of round robin of finger-pointing has subsided.

That is probably just as well. Because the plain truth is that the EU’s failings are not to be laid at the door of any single nationality. Rather, responsibility for them rests communally with the greater part of the dominant elites in each country of Europe, with such as the earlier cited Blair and Ahern, Belgium’s Guy Verhofstadt, Spain’s Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero (he masculinised it from ‘Zapatera’; in light of his support of homosexual marriage, he need not have bothered), and the now cashiered French and German premiers Jospin and Schroeder. What all of these worthies and their numerous hangers-on, concubines, and flunkies in government, the judiciary, and the media have in common is a shared vision. Products of the 1960s, they simply hate their respective countries, at least as they inherited them.

Naturally, this hatred does not extend to the organs of power, ultimately the gift in most European countries of Bonaparte and such unconscious successors as Bismarck and Cavour, but rather is aimed at the countries themselves, at whatever gave each their own identity. In all cases, this includes not merely Christianity, but its effect on society and culture; on traditional mores in the family and in the arts. To make all things anew after their own image was their desire in the 60s, and it remains so today. Yet each of these nations is a building block in what had been the very real but difficult to define entity called “Europe”, née Christendom. Just as, in their hands, their respective countries have begun to morph into something very different to what they had been, so too with the European Union.

Nothing is sacred to these folk! Hunting and the House of Lords must go in Great Britain, indissoluble marriage in Ireland, school crucifixes in Belgium and Spain, and strange and unusual means of producing goods in every rural hamlet on the continent, and smoking everywhere (were public health really a genuine concern, these mandarins might turn their attention to limiting such things as the behaviours which spread AIDS). Behind these lie greater alterations: the self-same all-important demography-busting marriage, life, and family issues referred to earlier.

Disastrous as these measure would doubtless be in the long-run, their practical harm is multiplied by the fact that they are all the rulers of Europe have to throw back at militant Islam, managing at once to convince the Muslims of their own moral supremacy, and to limit the ability of Europe to resist. The problem is that the EU has been recast in the leadership’s own image.

All of which having been said, we need to look and see if there is a viable alternative to what is on offer. I once told a German friend of mine — in Aachen, as it happened, outside of Charlemagne’s resting place in the cathedral there — that I was not opposed to “the union of Europe, but to this union of Europe!”  He responded, “no, Charles, you are really opposed to the union of this Europe.” He was right, but is there another Europe to choose?

Indeed there is.

The noted French Royalist, Charles Maurras, coined the notion of France being divided into two: the pays réel, the real France, Catholic and Royalist; and the pays légal, the legal France, anti-clerical and republican. Georges Bernanos wrote of life in the former France in his brilliant work Nous Autres Français — “We Other French”. Perhaps inspired by Bernanos, Philippe de Villiers called his former organisation Nous Autres Européens. It is the “Other Europe”, the Europe that drew its origin from Rome and Jerusalem that we must look at, rather than the one that is rooted in Brussels (much as I personally love that pleasant city!).

Two centuries ago, faced with the similar problem posed by the new Europe then a-borning, Romantic writer Friederich von Hardenberg (better known as Novalis) penned his best known essay, Christendom or Europe? Its opening paragraph was a battle cry, a challenge thrown down to everything that had happened to Europe since the Reformation:

This was high-flown Romanticism, to be sure, but not without some basis in historical fact, unlike the visions of the ruling revolutionaries of his day — or ours, for that matter. Certainly Novalis had uncovered the ideal of Medieval society in this passage, if not always its reality. One shudders to think of what the idealism of our current masters, with its glorification of perversion, conformity, and death, would look like, if reduced to writing.

At any rate, the Medieval Christendom of which Novalis wrote so glowingly was not, like modern Europe, a patchwork of more or less stable nation-states, but rather a crazy quilt of minor fiefdoms, principalities, duchies, free cities, ecclesiastical lordships, and strange local groupings not easily described (like the first three forest cantons of Switzerland or Holstein’s Dithmarschen). These in turn were grouped together, for the most part, into various kingdoms, although some of the lesser entities split their allegiance between two or more kings. The monarchs of these countries were sometimes elected, but usually hereditary.

But they were not heads of state in the modern understanding of the term, because the countries they presided over were not states, as we know them now. Lacking secret police or internal revenue services, they had none of the appurtenances of governance we would recognise. Indeed, to our eyes, these countries would have been mere bundles of anarchy.

This is because our ancestors lived in a very different mental universe to ours. Allegiance meant much more than merely being conscripted or taxed. Although the King may not have had the ability through his guards to impose his will much beyond his palaces, his subjects loyally upheld the local equivalent of “the King’s Peace.” Did a desperado “play the robber on the King’s Highway”? The neighbours would send up the hue and cry, hunt him down, and kill him in the name of the King, and the consider the “King’s Peace” restored. The nation, to our way of thinking, was a mutually imagined illusion.

But it was certainly real to them, in the sense of Platonic realism. Key to understanding how the mediaeval kingdom worked is to realise the difference between power and authority: the former is the ability to make things happen, the latter the right to say how that power should be used. In medieval times, power was diffuse, the lords, churchmen, commoners, guilds and so on all claiming their share. Authority, however, was in the hands of the King. A good king was like the leader of an orchestra, keeping all the various elements in harmony. But with a bad king (apart from annoyances meted out to his immediate companions), the result was not dictatorship in the modern fashion, but anarchy. When such times occurred, locals would often group together to “keep the peace”, forming a confraternity for that purpose. These bodies often served as local police and militia — such as the famous Santa Hermandades of Spain.

As a side note, it is fair to say that Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II probably has little more power than did her pre-Tudor ancestors (as much the founders of the modern state as anyone — like Louis XIV — else). But because, in our day, power is concentrated in the hands of the elite, while authority is scattered amongst a more or less oblivious electorate, her position looks much less impressive. Such is the modern state.

Binding all of these kingdoms and so on together were several institutions, first of which was the Church, with her several networks of dioceses and religious orders; she in turn gave her blessing to the complementary circuits of guilds and universities. Some of the same benediction touched Chivalry, the “corporation”, as it were, of knighthood; this would come in time to include the great military orders, which partook of both the Church and Chivalry.

But in, with, and under all of these was the idea of the “Holy Empire”, Roman in the West, Byzantine in the East. We really need to take a close and somewhat detailed look at this imperial idea, because it provides the great alternative to the notion of the European Union. Despite many future conflicts between the Imperial and Papal powers, there was an underlying unity between the two which was unbreakable. This is admirably summed up by James, Viscount Bryce, in The Holy Roman Empire:

Of course Voltaire, that great pioneer of the modern mindset, gibed that the Holy Roman Empire was “neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire”, nor had been for many years. Indeed, that was what any modern would see. But for most of its history, as an overarching framework of Christendom, it was at least as real to its denizens as “France”, “Germany”, or “Poland”. As with Chivalry, any given guild, the “republic of letters” of the universities, or the Church herself, the Empire was as real as its subjects conceived it to be — no matter how much they might fight over or even against it.

Proof of this contention may be found in the work of Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., who, as both a nineteenth-century Frenchman (and restorer of the Benedictines in that country as well as of Gregorian Chant throughout the Church) and as an Ultramontane (he was instrumental in bringing about the 1870 definition of Papal Infallibility) may not be accused of partiality in this matter. At the time of his writing, most commentators in English favoured the Medieval Emperors against the Popes because of their partiality toward Prussia and the nascent “German Empire” of Bismarck. This makes Dom Gueranger’s description of the imperial coronation in his entry for St. Leo III in his magisterial The Liturgical Year all the more telling:

The Imperial office was considered as sacred with Charlemagne and his successors as ever had been under Constantine, Theodosius, or Justinian. The Emperor was enrolled as a canon of St. John Lateran, and the church at Aix-la-Chapelle. He was considered to have some power over the weather by the people — in German today, fine sunny weather is still called Kaiserswetter.

The Empire in the East fell to the Turks in 1453, after which the Russian Tsars claimed that post for themselves. The last Holy Roman Emperor abdicated in 1806, and this is generally accepted as the end of the Institution, although legal experts always point out that the abdication of a sovereign does not dissolve his throne. This last Emperor had, two years earlier, declared himself Emperor of Austria. That line continued until 1918, when Blessed Charles I (of Austria — he would have been Charles VIII of the Holy Roman Empire), whose cause for sainthood is now complete, was forced off the throne at the behest of Woodrow Wilson.

It is rather ironic that the line begun with one Charles I, who is a Blessed, should have ended with another Charles I. The year before, Nicholas II abdicated the Russian throne. No longer does any government claim connexion with Constantine.

What is the importance of all of this history for the modern age? Well, as Valentin Tomberg put it:

We are dealing with deep and strange matters here. But the fact remains that the Empire, both East and West, is gone. The vision of the Holy Empire haunted the soldiers and administrators who pioneered the Spanish, Portuguese, French, and British colonial Empires. Of the latter, Ernest Barker wrote in his article “Empire” for the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica: “The British Empire is, in a sense, an aspiration rather than a reality, a thought rather than a fact; but, just for that reason, it is like the old Empire of which we have spoken; and though it be neither Roman nor Holy, yet it has, like its prototype, one law, if not the law of Rome — one faith, if not in matters of religion, at any rate in the field of political and social ideals”. The First World War, three years later, would weaken that Empire fatally, even as it would destroy the German Empire, the other great Protestant exponent of the Imperial idea.

In any case, across Europe, and in Latin America, Canada, the Philippines, and elsewhere, in institutions, customs, and buildings, the mark of the Empire can be seen. Even in our own United States, in places settled before Independence or by the French and Spanish, there yet linger traces; visible only to those who know what to look for, perhaps (like the double-eagle over the Spanish Governor’s Palace in San Antonio, Texas), but still present. In many ways, starting with the United States and their electoral college, such federal unions as Canada, Australia, South Africa, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, and India all owe elements of their constitutions to the Empire, and its idea of unity within diversity. The founders of the European Union hoped that their creation would, in some way, take its place, as did all the Popes from Pius XII to Benedict XVI. Instead, we have what we have.

But does this matter? Indeed it does, especially as the aging hippies of Brussels seem hell-bent on taking the place of Bonaparte and Hitler, albeit in a dull, “compassionate” kind of way. Back in 1900, the great Russian philosopher, Vladimir Soloviev, declared:

More recent authors have written in much the same vein. Journalist Gary Potter, in his 1991 work, In Reaction, wrote:

The malaise of Europe and her daughters is in great part traceable to her renunciation of the Faith that created her. But that renunciation itself owed much to the death of the Imperial idea, and the philosophical basis upon which it rested. The horrors Soloviev described have only worsened — not only on the national and continental levels, but the personal one as well.

Given this difficulty, and the others concerning demographics and Islam earlier mentioned, just what is to be done? It is evident that the Blairs and Zapateros are never going to wake up to reality (although, if Blair does convert to Catholicism after leaving office — which I hope for his sake he will — he will probably spend his dotage condemning the evils resulting from his own policies, without ever noticing their origins). It is just as evident that the rulership of Europe committed to the EU becoming an ever more encompassing superstate. It is truism to say that “the rulers rule and the subjects serve”, but they do in all societies, and never more than in the twenty-first century. In all likelihood, things will continue along the route they are proceeding, until at last the EU is a true prison of the nations, or Islam cleans Europe’s cuckoo clocks in a bath of blood. Neither is a particularly appetizing outcome, in all honesty.

But “while there is life, there is hope”, to quote a cliché, and much can yet be done. The first thing is an acceptance of reality. Despite the best (and truly noble) efforts of the Eurosceptics — and occasional partial and temporary victories here or there — I think that it must be admitted that the European institutions at Brussels, Strasbourg, and Luxembourg, with their attendant bureaucracies, are not going away, nor are their hideous buildings. In a political sense, then, the struggle for control of these bodies must be begun in earnest. What is required is a sort of political counter-revolution.

But counter-revolutions most often fail because their leadership (and sometimes their rank and file) have no real political ideas or ideology of their own, save opposition to the usurpers. Indeed, they often share many of their opponents’ basic beliefs, so successful has the revolution become. Moreover, conservatives, men of the right, call them what you will, not usually driven by hatred and envy, are usually not driven much at all. Why bother about the cause and some future, when the present can be so enjoyable?

Yet if Europe is not to sink beneath a sea of either blood, boredom, or both, those with the love of her as she was and to some degree yet remains at heart must be animated by a desire for political success the equal of her present rulers. Thankfully, the bits and pieces are still around to be picked up and perhaps re-sewn into a new garment.

The European Union has divided European conservatives in twain. On the one hand, there are the eurosceptics, who quite rightly fear the loss of national, regional, and provincial liberties. On the other, conservative proponents of an integrally united Europe, such as the Paneuropa Union, invoke the Crown of Charlemagne for their work. These two sets must realise that in reality, they compliment one another, and ought not to be opposed. France and Estonia, Asturias and Bavaria, all need to be preserved as fully functioning entities with legitimate lives and ethoi all their own; but this understanding needs to be blended with a true realisation of Europe’s legitimate cultural and spiritual unity, the need in today’s world for this unity to be expressed in a concrete way (especially in terms of trade and defence), and the importance of the civilisation that unity has engendered for the rest of the world — especially, but far from solely, the daughter nations. Nor should these realisations be restricted by race. Many a Goan, Tahitian, or Cape Coloured is a better European than those who crawl the corridors of power in the Mother Continent. Much the same could be said for the Christians dying for their Faith in China, the Sudan, India, Pakistan, or Indonesia.

This brings up another point, doubtless an uncomfortable one for many. That is the religious dimension. As earlier quoted, dear old Belloc declared, “the Faith is Europe, and Europe is the Faith”. Now, as many of the aforementioned Christians in Africa and Asia might tell you, there is some oversimplification there — but only some. Since Europe has, since 1945, done her best not to be the Faith, she has done an extremely effective job of being nothing at all. But Islam’s challenge cannot be countered with mere affirmations of an empty and weary pluralism. A positive thing can only be checked by another positive thing, not a negation.

Nor can this be a mere question of, as some churchmen have put it, of Europe regaining a sense of her Christian “roots” and “values”, any more than Islamic “roots” and “values” are posing a serious threat to the West. It is the conviction of individual Muslim militants that their personal salvation is bound up with their political and military actions that make them formidable, even as it was similar conviction on the part of Christians that allowed first the establishment of Europe herself, and then her expansion across the globe. Cynical historians may point to the part that lust for power and thirst for wealth played in these developments, and they are certainly correct to a degree. But those elements alone would never have brought armies of settlers across the seas, nor battalions of missionaries to exceedingly unpleasant climes. However given up to the worship of Mammon in all his forms my current home of Los Angeles may be, it was neither the quest for power or wealth that led to the founding of this City of Angels.

Even though such figures of the Right as Maurras, Bolingbroke, and Santayana might have been comfortable as unbelievers, citing religion’s mere utility in preserving the culture and institutions they loved, personal belief is required, if the Europe of the future is to be one worth living in. It was for this reason that, in his homily on the occasion of the beatification of Emperor Charles I of Austria, John Paul II declared, “From the beginning, the Emperor Charles conceived of his office as a holy service to his people. His chief concern was to follow the Christian vocation to holiness also in his political actions. For this reason, his thoughts turned to social assistance. May he be an example for all of us, especially for those who have political responsibilities in Europe today!”

I will outrage modern sensibilities even further, and say that a vague “Christianity” will not serve for this purpose. Rather, that Church that gave birth to Christendom in the first place is the only one that can truly serve as a religious basis for a revivified Europe. But for that to happen, she must regain the sense of self she has dissipated since the 1960s — a need her current Pontiff and the rising generation of clerics understand very well. Catholics, however, if they are to be politically effective, must learn to think once more of personal salvation, and of political, social, and charitable action as a means to that end. Many of the newer orders and movements in the Church, as well as revivals of older ones are hopeful signs in that direction.

In this light, ecumenism will have to be rethought. On the one hand, dialogue with moribund ecclesial bodies that are no longer sure of doctrinal realities is pointless. But dialogue in search of union with such groups as the Traditional Anglican Communion, the Hochkirchliche Vereinigung, and the Nordic Catholic Church (which body recently received the Apostolic Succession from the Polish National Catholics, with papal approval and encouragement) assumes a real urgency. All of that is even truer as regards the Orthodox and “lesser” Eastern Churches. The rediscovery of pilgrimages and refurbishing of pre-Reformation shrines in Northern Europe that has gone on since 2000 is a promising development along these lines. Official bodies (such as the European Institute of Cultural Routes) and private ones (like the Confraternities of St. James in various countries) have done much to revive the pilgrims’ routes, especially to Compostela, that did so much to bring the peoples of Catholic Europe together in both movement and devotion.

We also need to regain a love for Europe as Christendom, for our own country’s heroes and traditions, as well as those of the others. From Aetius and Arthur to von Stauffenberg, the great ones who defended Europe against her enemies, and who spread her religion and civilisation throughout the world, should be vindicated. No longer ought we to apologise for the Crusades (save for when folly or treachery on the part of those paladins frustrated their high purpose). We should honour, as part of our common heritage, folk like the Chouans and Vendéens in France, the Cristeros in Mexico, the Cavaliers and Jacobites in the British Isles, the Carlists in Spain, the Pontifical Zouaves, and on and on. It needs also to be remembered that, at their best, they fought under the standard of Jesus and Mary; at their worst, they were still better, as men, than the “heroes” the modern world offers us, such as Norman Bethune, Margaret Sanger, and Che Guevara.

This being the case, it would be well for theologians and others concerned with European institutions and holding at least some of the views heretofore outlined to take another look at the vision of the Empire. This too is already happening. Fr. Aidan Nichols, O.P., for example, in his Christendom Awake! would call the Holy Roman Empire back into being:

Given that Fr. Nichols belongs to a rather influential school of theology, it is far from impossible that some future Pope may well see the need for the sort of restoration here envisaged. If such a Pontiff mounts the throne of St. Peter at a time when the then-leadership of the European Union feel a need to animate their machinery with a soul, we may well see something of a new Empire emerge. This development would profoundly affect the European daughter nations of the Americas, Australasia, and elsewhere; moreover, it might well be the only real answer Western Civilization can make to a resurgent Islam.

Eurosceptics, Pan Europeans, Catholic activists, neo-Imperialists — none of these need agree on all points at this stage. What they must do is talk with each other and write up their ideas. A body of discourse should be built, “knitting up the fragments” as it were, of past traditions and present needs. Above all, folk minded in this direction who do not care to go into European or national politics (or find no opportunity thereat) should consider two equally or even more important areas of endeavour: academia, and the production of reference materials, such as encyclopaedias and dictionaries. Samuel Johnson saw the importance of this latter area of the conflict, and it has been well said that the history of the world, at least its English-speaking component, would have been far different had the Encyclopaedia Britannica been produced at Oxford rather than at Cambridge.

All of this labour in the macrocosm may well take generations, even as the opposition’s work did — and it could certainly be that we do not have the time. Worse still, most of us will never play any role at all on the continental or national stage, whether in a political, academic, or literary role. What, then about the rest of us? Ought we simply to sit back and hope for the best?

By no means! Each of us needs to cultivate a personal Faith, simply because, presuming we have souls, each of us will be around far longer than the current political scene, and our own damnation or salvation depends upon it. Beyond that, though, the creeping of “that Hideous strength” into every corner of Europe and the West requires resistance — resistance in our own particular sphere, in which we find ourselves. Whether it be larger issues, such as abortion or euthanasia, or smaller local ones, such as protection of the built heritage or unspoiled areas, looking after the poor or disabled, defending the Monarchy, hunting, or other traditional institutions and practises, or just fighting for the right of local cheese or sausage makers to continue their craft as their fathers did, we each have a battle to fight. But, if we are in Europe, we should remember that we are fighting in what appear to be parochial conflicts the local battle of a great war, and get in touch with similarly-engaged folk throughout the Continent, exchanging ideas and tactics. The threat is Europe-wide, so should be the defence.

What of the future? Who knows? Should ever something along the lines of Fr. Nichols’ proposal become likely, the case can be made that the abdication of Francis II in 1806, which is generally considered to be the act that ended the Empire, simply began a new interregnum, comparable to that opened by Romulus Augustulus’ renunciation of the throne in 476 A.D., and concluded by Charlemagne’s coronation in 800 (although, to be sure, the Eastern Empire continued uninterruptedly all that time). As Viscount Bryce himself points out:

What made Great Britain’s refusal of recognition of the Emperor’s act so important is that her King, at that time Elector of Hanover, had a voice in the governance of the Empire and a vote in the election of any future Emperor. But much the same case is made by Klaus Epstein:

Should such a Pontiff emerge as we just spoke of, given that by the Empire’s law the Pope was in fact “Imperial Vicar” during an interregnum (pace Viscount Bryce), he would have a firm legal base from which to conjure the Empire back into existence.

But that is all speculation. Should Europe be overwhelmed by external enemies or collapse into some horrible Orwellian nightmare, or both, the Faith and the notion of the Empire will survive her. No doubt a new civilisation will arise on her ruins, even as she did on those of old Rome. Yet there will be continuity of some kind; it may be that Brazilians or Congolese will free the Mother Continent from her occupiers, and retransform her cathedrals from mosques into churches once more, as happened so many times in Spain and Hungary. In truth, while we may be confident of future victory, at this time we can no more predict what form that victory will take than Ss. Ambrose and Augustine could have foretold Clovis and Justinian.

But what of us as individuals? What have we to look forward to? The work that has been laid before us, done with all our might, as part of our quest for Heaven. In one way, Blessed Charles of Austria was a complete failure. Nothing he tried in the political sphere succeeded: World War I did not end early, his peoples were not able to settle down as equal partners in one house, and even his attempts to regain Hungary came to miserable ends. He died a tubercular exile on a far-off island. Bl. Thomas Percy tried, in the Rising in the North, to restore England’s Church and State; he failed, and was executed in the Tower of London. St. Louis IX attempted to re-ignite the Crusades, and died a prisoner of the Turks. The Church did not raise these men to her altars for their political efforts, but for their personal holiness; nevertheless, those efforts played a role in their ascension to Heaven. So it may be for us, God willing, regardless of whatever may come from our poor actions this side of the grave.

The Crown of Charlemagne rests in Vienna’s Hofburg, while his throne is in the upper gallery at Aachen’s cathedral. Though the last Imperial claimant went into exile in 1918, the ghost of the Empire remains; it will do so, so long as there are folk of Faith and valour left upon the Earth. Those who come after may well look more like Indians, Chinese, or Africans than ourselves, but they will be worthy successors of Arthur, Charlemagne, and Godefroi de Bouillon all the same.

The Holy Roman Empire in Liturgy

The Roman Empire in the West came to an end in 476 A.D., although it continued in the East. When the Pope crowned Charlemagne as Emperor in 800, the ideal, which had never vanished entirely, was restored. Despite many conflicts between the Imperial and Papal powers, there was an underlying unity which was unbreakable. The great Dom Louis Gueranger relays to us this ceremony for the seventh lesson of Christmas Matins (dealing with the order of Caesar Augustus for the census which brought Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem) at St. Peter’s:

This was echoed by the prayers of the Roman Missal, until 1955. Among the “Occasional Prayers” (sets of collects, secrets, and post-communions for various intentions, to be said by the priest after finishing the propers), we find the following, “For the Emperor”:

Nor was this the only liturgical treatment the Emperor received. Twice a year, all Catholics came into contact with the Imperial idea. Among the Good Friday Collects was inserted the following:

Then again, on Holy Saturday, during the Exsultet, the prayer blessing the Paschal Candle, the priest would chant: