Movie Takes
Joyeux Noel
A moving though not necessarily perceptive account of the Christmas truce on the Western Front in 1914.
p>
em>Here dead we lie
br>
Because we did not choose
br>
To live and shame the land
br>
From which we sprung.
/em>
/p>
p>
em>Life, to be sure,
br>
Is nothing much to lose,
br>
But young men think it is,
br>
And we were young.
/em>
/p>
A.E. Housman’s little poem about the dead of World War I still has the power to make shivers run up and down the spine. Yet the pathos he evokes depends utterly, it seems to me, on the “Because…” clause in the first stanza. In other words, there was a reason why the young men died. Negatively, it was called shame; positively, honor. The sadness of their loss is actually all the greater because Housman accepts this reason calmly, as a given, without comment or criticism.
About the Author
James Bowman, our movie and culture critic, is a resident scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He is the author of Honor: A History and Media Madness: The Corruption of Our Political Culture, both published by Encounter Books.
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