Time - The Mollifier of War
(1963-64)

War is futile. In times of war countries devote all their resources towards the destruction of their enemy. Their enemy is a neighbouring nation that is only separated from themselves by a barrier of barbed-wire placed there at the instruction of politicians. Men are thrown into battle with the sole purpose of killing the foe. To this glorious end ten million men and women were killed in the First World War alone. What emerges from such a bloody and lengthy war? One side is said to be the victor and the other the defeated. Neither the victor nor the defeated has really achieved anything except devastation of the country and the mental and physical exhaustion of its people to such an extent that they are nauseated by the horror of war. Both nations suffer and in order to do so they sacrifice millions of men.

It seems that it is only at the end of a war that the vanity of conflict is fully realised. In 1919 politicians said that the previous few years had seen "the war to end all wars". Yet twenty years later, the very same countries embarked upon another fruitless slaughter and at the conclusion of these hostilities promises, similar to those of 1919, were again made. War is a frame of mind induced by the words of national leaders with a craving for absolute power. To this end, time must be the greatest ally of the frenzied leader.

Time helps people to forget. Nations want to forget the past for the past means war and its inseparable ravages. One cannot entirely erase the past but time can mollify the horrors and replace them, to a certain degree, with "the glory of war". Today, people speak of the glorious charge of the Light Brigade during the Crimean War. What is glorious about riding headlong to certain death? There was the famous wave of British patriotism in 1914 when the "ordinary men" of Britain went to Flanders to fight for God, King and Country. However, the mud and gore of the Flemish battles soon dispelled the enthusiasm of the British patriot. Already the suffering of the last war has been masked and a different image has appeared, as represented by many recent films and books.

Time helps people to forget the horrors and to present a new, more sanguine picture of war. In the wake of Time emerge the heroes - men who have won the Victoria Cross, Military Medal or the Croix de Guerre. It is not the countless thousands who have been killed, maimed or wounded who are remembered, but the legendary few who personify the new image of war. People will remember Churchill. Eisenhower, Montgomery, Lloyd George, Clemenceau and Foch, but the twenty thousand men killed in the capture of a single windmill in Flanders in the First World War will not be remembered with such reverence and awe. Time will soften our sense of outrage so that eventually we are ready to accept war yet again.