The Ballad at War

Continuing my occasional practice of dipping into Chesterton’s Ballad of the White Horse and surrounding matters for interesting posts, here’s a column that ran in the Times of London on June 13, 1941.  It comes on the heels of the fall of Crete to the Nazis in World War II, a crushing defeat that saw the first major victory for an airborne infantry as well as the fierce guerilla resistance of the civilian population against those who would try to conquer them.  Many thousands of Allied troops were also taken prisoner.

And so, with all of that in mind, this column ran:

You’ll have to forgive the highlighting on the title; that’s one of the side effects of the search engine used to locate such things.  I’ve got a number of other interesting clips I intend to post at a later date, but this one shall do for now.

There are reports of a similar column being run after the victory at El-Alamein in November of 1942, only this time it was not a note of hardship and despair that was cited, but rather one of exultation: “‘The high tide!’ King Alfred cried, / ‘The high tide and the turn!’”  There are reports, anyway, but if it really did run in the Times as has been said, I’ve been unable to locate it.  The closest I’ve been able to find is a column recounting Churchill’s famous “end of the beginning” speech and concluding with some lines from Byron.  Further updates on this one as they become possible.

If any of you happen to know which issue/date/page/anything the latter citation of the Ballad comes from, I’d very much like to hear about it.  The Chesterton biographies have occasionally mentioned that it happened (always in conjunction with the first instance concerning Crete), but have not, that I’ve noticed, provided any useful citation to back it up.

And still it continues

Posting will still be light to non-existent as I continue to revise, rewrite and revise the materials I need to have completed by the 1st.  It’ll happen, but it won’t be fun.  Your patience is appreciated.

A friend in need

Brian Visaggio, author of Saint Superman and friend-of-this-blog, is having some trouble at the moment and has need of your prayers and support.  Be sure to drop by and help him out.

More waiting

Going to have to hold off on anything like regular updates for at least another week while I get this work done.  I’ll try to put stuff up as the mood strikes me (and will certainly return to a regular schedule come Aug. 1st, if I can swing it), but for now it’s going to have to wait.

Such is life.

The Best Costume EVER

I’m not exaggerating.

Completely great.

More on The Dark Knight (SPOILERS)

As a promised follow-up to my review yesterday, what follows is another post in which no caution about spoilers whatever is exercised. Those still wishing to see the film untainted, as it were, should read no further.

I’ll have a few more posts coming later today on other subjects, but for the moment I’ve got some work to take care of.

Help the American Chesterton Society

The following is a message sent out recently by Dale Ahlquist, as copied from the American Chesterton Society’s own blog:

Dear Friends of Chesterton,

I don’t mean to clog up the blog, but I need to make another appearance here directly on the heels of dealing with the New Yorker. With Chesterton becoming better known, the attacks are beginning, and we need to be able to respond.

Unfortunately, we couldn’t be in a worse position to do so. The American Chesterton Society is facing a financial crisis. We need your help. Our usual donations are way down, and as usual, our expenses have gone in the other direction. We need to raise $30,000.

We understand that everyone is feeling squeezed right now, but whatever you can do to help – $25, $50, $100 or more – it would be greatly appreciated.

Your donation is tax-deductible, and you can donate online.

or mail you donation to:

The American Chesterton Society
4117 Pebblebrook Circle
Minneapolis, MN 55437

Please help us keep Chesterton’s flame burning brightly. Thank you so very much.

Your servant,

Dale Ahlquist, President
American Chesterton Society

Give what you can; they do so much and get so little in return, apart from gratitude.

Webster Cook Impeached

The Orlando Sentinel is reporting that Webster Cook, the student senator at the heart of the Eucharistic controversy down in Florida, has been impeached by his own student government.

All but two of the 35 senators present voted to impeach Webster Cook, but the action did not result in his automatic removal from office.

Instead, the vote sets in motion an investigation that could lead to Cook’s eventual removal from his Senate post if he is found to have violated Senate ethics rules.

The Senate will decide whether any sanction is required after the investigation.

[. . .]

But the impeachement is not based on Cook’s taking the wafer. It’s based on allegations that he represented himself as a student government official at the service.

Although the Senate could kick Cook off the student government’s legislative body, it does not have the authority to suspend or expel Cook from the university. That could happen only if he’s found to have violated serious conduct code violations in student court. UCF is barred by federal law from confirming whether any complaints have been filed against Cook. But the statements included in the affidavit refer to a formal complaint against Cook by the campus ministry for disrupting the service.

The Senate investigation will include a special hearing to be scheduled within four weeks but no earlier than two weeks from now, student government officials said. The hearing could include testimony from Cook and ministry officials.

[. . .]

Thursday’s vote came after less than 15 minutes of deliberation. Senate leaders cut short any discussion of whether Cook was right or wrong in taking the wafer, saying they should focus on whether Cook broke Senate rules.

When further results come in, I’ll be sure to post them.  Thanks to a correspondent for bringing this to my attention.

The reader comments on the story linked to above are by turns heartbreaking and incredible (sometimes both).  Such is the world in which we live.

Myers-Cook Brouhaha: The Adventure Continues

A couple of things to note today, including some good news out of Florida:

- A new report from Quasius, who was at the mass in question:

All of Cook’s charges against CCM and the girl whom he claims assaulted him have been dismissed by the student court.

Good news indeed!  Let’s hope this can be an end to the matter, and that further infamy is not perpetrated by Catholic Campus Ministries or anyone else involved.

- Maybe I spoke too soon, though.  CCM is apparently now insisting that Cook is lying about being Catholic and that he came to the mass that day to “accuse Catholics of worshipping the devil.”  This is pretty serious and unlikely stuff, so I’d take the report with a grain of salt.

- As I noted in the original post on the 17th, Prof. Myers has appeared on “The Heart of the Matter,” a show on Catholic Radio International, in an extensive interview (an hour) on the subject at hand as well as other things. There’s some debating, some banter, and some generally genial interaction. It’s available for download at the link, but you’ll have to scroll down ever so slightly to find it. It’s under the heading, “We Need to Talk.”  It is not, in my own opinion, an especially successful interview for anyone involved, but it’s worth presenting here in the interest of completeness.

- Apart from conducting this interview, Prof. Myers has reiterated his desire to descrate the inconsequential and wholly unsacred objects that offend him so.  He does so, however, with a palpable sense of frustration and fatigue, and I can’t say I blame him.  This affair has gone on for a long time.  In other news, he also plans to desecrate a Koran; indeed, apparently people have been mailing them to him for some reason.

Bonus Unintended Comedy: In the link just above, the good professor mistakes a standard chain e-mail for some willed message directed especially at him, taking it to be typical of the response he’s received on this subject.  How long has he been on the Internet, again?  A simple Google search for one line from the message (“Many more important people have forgotten that there is no other name that was given so much authority as the name of Jesus”) returns over 2500 hits, all of them referencing the chain message in question.  I can’t count the number of times I’ve received it or variations of it myself, and on most of those occasions it wasn’t even from a human being.

The Dark Knight (2008)

It doesn’t get much better than this. 9.5/10

NOTE: I’ve avoided spoilers in the review that follows.  Those wishing for a more in-depth and spoiler-filled look at the film, though not necessarily a review, can go here.