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Evelyn Waugh Newsletter and Stud EVELYN WAUGH NEWSLETTER AND STUD EVELYN WAUGH NEWSLETTER AND STUDIES Vol. 37, No. 3 Winter 2007 Inventing Invention: Alan Munton, Sword of Honour and the Invention of Disillusion by Donat Gallagher James Cook University Alan Munton’s recent essay, “Evelyn Waugh’s Sword of Honour: The Invention of Disillusion,”[1] is the most protracted disparagement of Waugh since Conor Cruise O’Brien’s “The Pieties of Evelyn Waugh.”[2] The writers differ in that O’Brien was a polemical stunt man, aiming to dazzle and wound, whereas Dr Munton, like so many British academics and journalists who write about Waugh, is moralistic. But the effect is the same. Apart from a few grudging concessions about the personal themes in the trilogy, and a backhanded compliment on the “honesty” that drove Waugh to “provide the ammunition later used against himself” (241), Waugh is allowed no decent motive, no information, no intellectual integrity—not even the courage and flair needed to make a really unpopular point of view noticed. The essay begins with a complex survey of Waugh’s writings up to 1939, one theme of which is “continuous reinvention” (232). This means that Waugh invented “different principles” as each new topic arose—Abyssinia, Spain, Mexico. The same opportunism (we are told) skews Waugh’s approach to World War II and leads to “substantial historical distortions” in Sword of Honour (244). It follows that if the events that bring about Guy Crouchback’s “disillusion” never happened, then Guy’s disillusion must be “invented.” I enjoyed Dr Munton’s well-written essay and admire him for defending the values he believes Waugh subverts. But I must say that almost every statement in the essay relevant to the “invention” theme is (to use Dr Munton’s phrase) a “perverse interpretation” of Waugh’s words. Space permits discussion of only four “perverse interpretations” that relate directly to Sword of Honour and to Waugh’s fitness to write about World War II. Ironically, Dr Munton is so wrong about Waugh, and so muddled about history, that he emerges as inventing the “invention” he attributes to Waugh. History Dr Munton says accusingly that Waugh “describes the history of a war, but has no theory of history” (229). Like most readers, I would argue that Waugh had an unusually keen interest in the past and an awareness of the constructedness of period that anticipates the postmodern. But that argument must await a better opportunity. My interest at this point is to see how Dr Munton arrives at his conclusion. He writes: "In Robbery under Law [Waugh] specifically rejects ‘the historical theory of recurrent waves of civilization which lasted a few centuries, built massive cities and tombs and were literally buried in the sands.’ He cannot follow Gibbon . or accept the Spenglerian notion of a cyclic history . for all large questions are settled by belief in God . ." (229). Now this is gob smacking. The bromide that Catholics can have no personal opinions about “large questions” is merely embarrassing; but the claim that Waugh “rejects ‘the historical theory of recurrent waves of civilization’” reverses Waugh’s plain meaning. The passage in Robbery under Law that Dr Munton refers to, far from “rejecting” the “historical theory of recurrent waves of civilization,” in fact endorses it in the very strongest way (as might be expected of a writer who took Spengler on his honeymoon). Waugh actually chides Western societies for not taking the fact of “recurrent waves of civilization” into “practical calculation” (RUL 276). He warns Western civilization—and he rode this hobby horse all his life—that Progress is not inevitable, and that if a civilization fails to make the “unremitting effort” needed to “keep [itself] going,” it, too, will decline and fall (RUL 278-9). Dr Munton claims that Waugh’s “one consistent stand” was “to take history out of politics and to replace history with ideal terms” (233). But Waugh’s whole tendency of thought was to file:////uol.le.ac.uk/...c144/My%20Documents/Evelyn%20Waugh/Evelyn%20Waugh%20Studies/Newsletters/Newsletters/Newsletter_37.3.htm[04/12/2013 14:44:47] EVELYN WAUGH NEWSLETTER AND STUD deal in specifics.[3] In Robbery under Law he roundly condemns politicians like “Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin and Lenin” precisely because they founded their “ideal” states on the repudiation of history (91). War Implying that Waugh was unequipped to write about World War II, Dr Munton writes: “Waugh had no large-scale theories of his own about the nature of war. Indeed he can have none, for the major questions are already settled by his membership of the Catholic Church” (229). This simply ignores the fact that during and after the 1939-1945 conflict, Waugh became convinced, and embedded the conviction in Sword of Honour, that a “just” war is limited to righting a wrong. In this he differed from many others who, often under Marxist inspiration, embraced World War II as a crusade against Fascism and an opportunity to advance a social program. What Dr Munton really means is, not that Waugh lacked a theory of war, but that Waugh’s theory differed from his own. During the same period, Waugh came to regard war carried on by modern methods as immoral. “Area” bombing (against which Vera Brittain campaigned so courageously), the creation of fire storms in densely populated cities designed to break civilian morale and the atomic bomb convinced him that “War as waged by airmen and physicists against civilian populations is absolutely wrong in morals and fatuous as practical politics."[4] He also subscribed to the truism that, “In war opponents soon forget the cause of the quarrel [e.g. World War II began to preserve Poland’s independence but ended with Poland ceded to Russia], continue to fight for the sake of fighting and in the process assume a resemblance to what they abhorred” [in 1939 the Allies thought only Nazis capable of fire-storming a non-strategic city packed with refugees, but in 1945 they perpetrated Dresden].”[5] As early as 1937, in “The Soldiers Speak,”[6] Waugh was anti-militaristic and most emphatically opposed to Nazi glorification of war. He believed that war led to “the pollution of truth, the deterioration of human character, the emergence of the bully and the cad, the obliteration of chivalry . [to] muddle and futility.” Where he differed from the overwhelming pacifist sentiment of the time (it was the era of the Peace Ballot) was in admitting, “unenthusiastically,” that war was a “dirty job” that sometimes had to be “carried out.” Dr Munton may well disagree with Waugh, but he really cannot claim that he had “no” theory of war. Finland Waugh writes in Men at Arms: The newspapers . were full of Finnish triumphs. Ghostly ski troops . swept through the sunless forests . Russian might had proved to be an illusion. Mannerheim held the place in English hearts won in 1914 by King Albert of the Belgians. Then quite suddenly it appeared the Finns were beaten. For Guy the news quickened the sickening suspicion . that he was engaged in a war in which courage and a just cause were quite irrelevant to the issue. No one at Kut-al-Imara House seemed much put out by the disaster. (175) Dr Munton alleges that this passage “exaggerates the likely success of the Finns,” represents “the British public [as more] interested in the war” than it was, “invents a popular feeling that did not exist” and thus “contrives a moment of disillusion” (235). But the accusations are meaningless because, on the evidence of what is in his essay, Dr Munton seems unaware of the see-saw nature of the Russo-Finnish war or of the world- wide jubilation that greeted Finnish victories. A glance at “the newspapers” rather than at Angus Calder’s “editor’s note” [7] would have revealed how neatly Sword of Honour encapsulates these events and the slightly surreal way in which the press covered them. Following the Nazi-Soviet pact in 1939, Russia made demands on Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia and Finland. The first three countries reluctantly gave way. Finland refused. Russia then accused Finland of “aggression,” invaded on 30 November 1939, bombed its open cities and set file:////uol.le.ac.uk/...c144/My%20Documents/Evelyn%20Waugh/Evelyn%20Waugh%20Studies/Newsletters/Newsletters/Newsletter_37.3.htm[04/12/2013 14:44:47] EVELYN WAUGH NEWSLETTER AND STUD up a puppet regime to “invite” Russia to help it effect regime change. To the surprise and delight of the non-communist world (only Germany, then Russia’s ally, remained politely silent), the Finns fought back successfully for two months and even the strongly pro-Soviet New Statesman reported that the Russians had been “severely repulsed” and were “surrendering in large numbers.”[8] Russia then regrouped and on 1 February 1940 attacked with overwhelming force. However, the “newspapers,” guided by a Ministry of Information averse to bad news, continued to laud Finnish resistance; and when Finland capitulated on 12 March, the defeat seemed “sudden.” Everyone (except the die-hard Communists who hailed the Russians as “liberators”) admired the Finns’ courage and military skill. But no one expected four million Finns to defeat 180 million Russians. As early as December 1939, Waugh wrote of the “Finns still resisting and raising unrealizable hopes.”[9] Dr Munton can claim that Waugh “exaggerates the likely success of the Finns” only because he fails to pick up the irony in “the newspapers” being “full of Finnish triumphs” one day and “suddenly” reporting the Finns “beaten” next day. Nor did Waugh need to “invent popular feeling” about Finland. Russia’s claim to have been attacked by Finland drew derision from around the world, while the bombing of her open cities created outrage.
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