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.