ABSTRACT
Perhaps. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. The Latin saying has
many resonances. It was coined by Horace, a poet-propagandist
of the slave-based economy and conquering, multi-peopled
empire of Rome under the canny Emperor Augustus. Yet the
words were echoed in the twentieth century by a rather different
poet, the Welshman Wilfred Owen. They form the most telling
line of his bitter denunciation of trench warfare on the Western
Front during the First World War. As the poem explains
defiantly, these Latin words constitute the ‘old lie’ that drives
men and even some women to pointless extinction, while, in
Flanders, the imperial British army slogs it out with the imperial
German army to the benefit of neither society. Of course, Owen
uses the word ‘patria’ (fatherland), rather than nation, perhaps
importantly so, since it is not at all certain that imperial Britain
and imperial Germany were ‘nations’, should that word be
precisely defined. After all, was Lieutenant Owen British, or
English, or Anglo-Saxon, or British imperial, or Welsh, or middle-
class, or intellectual and male? As soon as the glitter of the
nation is faced down, as soon as the music of the national song is
stilled, as soon as the glory and sacrifice of the national military
record and the devotion of national politicians to the safety of
their people are questioned, defining the nation turns out to be
the greatest conundrum in the history of human life since the
French Revolution, if not before. In the twenty-first century, bil-
lions of people, if asked, are likely to assert that their identity is
rooted primarily in their nation. Mysteriously, the liberal nation
in modern times can embrace the individual and the family as
well as the whole community. Modernity has been built ‘on the
twin pillars of the nuclear family which posed as an individual
Paradoxes crowd in. As the French writer Ernest Renan
remarked more than a century ago, the nation is nothing
without falsehood. As we cheer our athletes, hail our business
achievements, express our national family values, vote for our
politicians, salute our flag, draw spiritual meaning from our
countryside and claim eternity for ourselves, we distort history.