Technology Can Save (or Destroy) The World

"War on an industrial scale is inevitable. They'll do it themselves in a few years."

~Prof. James Moriarty Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

   As I said last time, while the royal cousins of Europe were smiling at each other, back home they were building up their armies and experimenting with new weapons. Symbolic relationships and family ties were not hard currency when it came to foreign affairs.  Since the fall of Rome, international policy had chiefly consisted of national security, that is, military superiority.  Do unto others first,  before they invade you, or if they do try to invade you, make sure you can make them sorry they tried. Exhibit A, the British defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588.
     For all the new societal organizations and business partnerships, nineteenth century Europe had no solid system of diplomatic mediation. The closest to such that existed was the first Geneva Convention, convened in 1864, and was more about humanitarianism in war than international negotiation. Tsar Nicholas II convened the Hague Conference in 1899, which brought the powers of Europe together to limit the buildup of armaments and also found an international court to settle disputes between nations. The International Court was indeed founded, but the problem was convening the court was to be voluntary.  There is no purpose in having a way to settle international disputes if participation is voluntary.  Any country can then do whatever they please to their neighbors and then politely decline to participate in the court if summoned.
    Britain and France ruled much of the world at this time, thus much international conflict arose over jealous competition between the two of them, and Germany, who had a few colonies that it wanted to keep from the rest. Germany was the worst at provoking the rivalry between these three when, in 1900, it determined to build a naval fleet capable of engaging the Royal Navy. By 1906, the race to out-build Germany was at the forefront of British public policy.  France, in turn, decided to match Germany in number of soldiers. No mean feat, because Germany had a population of 60 million souls, France only 40 million. They did this by enacting the "Three Year Law" in 1913, extending the service of conscripts to three years.
    Thus soldier making and armaments manufacture became yet another of the new industries of the turn of the 20th century.  Nearly all of Europe made it necessary for all their young men to go through military training and remain in reserve until late middle-age.  The exception to this was Britain which, surrounded by sea and defended by the most powerful navy in the world, saw no need for this. Therefore, in 1914 there were some two hundred military divisions ready at a moment's notice, with sufficient firepower to destroy each other in the first few minutes of the war.
      The only thing that kept the world from ending so quickly was communication.  Large armies can only be efficiently deployed with near instantaneous communication, and the world did not quite have that yet. Radio (wireless telegraphy as it was known then) was still in its infancy, and while well known in theory, was not practical in the field. Primitive radios were too large and used too much energy to be used anywhere outside ships.  The telephone and telegraph were the fastest way to send word, and those both depend on fragile wires, easily broken as soon as they were set up. When those failed, the fastest way to send and receive news and commands were the most ancient ways, word of mouth and the written word, which can only travel as fast as a man, or whatever he rides or drives. This is why it first took a while for the war to actually start when war was declared and also why front lines often came to a grinding halt as territory was won and lost by inches later on. Commanders were reduced to confusion and uncertainty, while soldiers waited days or weeks to receive orders.
    Certainly,  it is also this uncertainty in communications that brought the war into being. In that fateful summer, the diplomatic crisis that was ignited by an assassination was slave to the wheel, the written note, the telegraph schedule and the encipher routine. Events swelled and outpaced the ability of diplomats and statesmen to control them, and they overwhelmed the primitive ways of communication. Why no one bothered to use a telephone I cannot say, except that no one thought about it. Telephones were certainly available for use, they had been around for nearly thirty years at least.  Everyone was too used to the regular routine that had served for years. So, the chain reaction began, as if everyone had been wanting to do this for so long, and they felt the had no other choice.

The Interdependence of Nations

Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch. *
and when we were children, staying at the archduke's,
My cousin's, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

~T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland

   Part of why the Great War came as such a surprise to everyone was because European Culture at the time was so cohesive and united.  Everything was so dependent on everything else that war seemed nearly impossible. In 1910, economic interdependence in Europe caused Norman Angell in The Great Illusion to say that the threat of disruption of international credit would either prevent a war entirely, or bring it to a quick end if war did break out. Almost all informed opinion agreed with this.
     The last two decades of the 19th century and the first decade of the 20th were unlike any other that had been before, or quite possibly will be again. A twenty-year depression that began in the middle of the century was cushioned by a price decrease in raw and manufactured goods. The gasping economy was jolted to  life again  by new categories of manufactured goods, such as chemical dyes and internal combustion engines, to tempt consumers. Population increase in Europe, anywhere from 25% to 50% depending on the region, led to immigration to the Americas and Australasia. This, along with the expansion of empires, brought other inhabitants of the world into the international market.  Between 1875 and 1913 the unification of trademarks, artistic property, accountancy, maritime law, weights and measures, and copyright conventions all came into being.
   In addition to this came also two revolutions in transport, the steam ship, and the railway. People and products could now move around the world in a fraction of the amount of time they had before. South African gold and diamonds, Indian textiles, African and Malaysian rubber, Canadian wheat, Australian sheep, South American Cattle and everything that was being produced en masse in the United States (in 1913 the largest economy in the world) was moving around the world in record time, and most of it's capital passed through one place, London. The city of the world. London's international connections of its banks and insurance companies made it the standard medium for commerce for all civilized countries.
     Internationalism, however, had become as much cultural as it was commercial. Much of Europe was united under the Holy Catholic Church as it had been since Roman times. The rest, while not Catholic, were some other flavor of Christian: Lutheran, Anglican, Calvinists, Anabaptist, Greek or Russian Orthodox, Armenian Christians and Egyptian Coptic. Europe was intensely Christian and had been for centuries. Out of this saturation of Christianity rose the abolition of slavery, and organisations protecting worker's rights and sanctioning child labor. Christian Europe was so indignant at the Ottoman Empire's (i.e. Muslim) treatment of its minorities that international intervention was prompted in Greece and Lebanon several times.
    Religiously and Idealistically homogeneous, Europe was also culturally unified. The educated classes held all the same things at equal value. They all admired Italian Renaissance art and German Classical music. (Let me tell you, Germany has produced some of the best and most complex music humanity has ever seen.) Names like Victor Hugo, Leo Tolstoy, Honore de Balzac, Dickens, Dante, Shakespeare and Goethe were familiar to every European high school child, and nearly all of them could speak French, German, or Italian, if not more than one of those. The classics, Homer, Plato and the like, were still studied by all as they had been since the Middle Ages. Although they were a small minority, university graduates of Europe held the same body of knowledge and philosophy among them that it could be identified as a single European culture. The unity of Europe at the time is now way better illustrated, however, than in its royal families, who were all, in one way or another related to each other. A thousand years of only being allowed to marry into one social class eventually leaves you with only relative to marry.
      Nineteenth century Europe was no exception. All European rulers were cousins, and most were children or grandchildren of Queen Victoria. George V of England, Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, and his wife Alexandra, were all first cousins. (Nicholas and Wilhelm were also third cousins, I'll stop before this gets even more weird. Suffice to say, West Virginia has nothing on European Royalty.)
   So, with all this unity and relative harmony and  homogeneity, where did it all go horribly, horribly wrong? What happened to this golden age of prosperity to end not with a whimper, but an apocalypse of blood and fire? Well, all was unity and cooperation on the surface, under the surface was a different story.  The arms race was picking up. The "Concert of Europe" which had been unintentionally established by Napoleon (an alliance of most of the countries of Europe against him), was beginning to wear thin.  While the royal cousins were smiling at each other, back home they were each massing armies, just waiting for someone to make the first move. I will examine this further in my next piece.



*I am not Russian at all; I come from Lithuania, I am a real German.

A Cultural Tragedy

"We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
   Loved and were loved, and now we lie
         In Flanders fields."  
~ Lt Col. John McCrae

  The Great War was a tragedy unlike any other. It was tragic because it could have easily been prevented at any point in the five weeks leading up to the war if reason and prudence had halted the avalanche of events. It is tragic because it destroyed a culture of general peace and prosperity, ruined and ended the lives of millions Tragic because it left a legacy of political and racial hatred that could only be consummated in a second war. 

   Nearly every community, church, and cathedral in France and England have a war memorial inscribed with the names of those that did not return.  The acres of graveyards in France and Britain bear solemn testimony to this. This "lost generation" of young men would leave 630,000 war widows in France alone and deprive a generation of young women the opportunity for marriage. By wars end, there would be 45 men for every 55 women, on average, in the general population.
    France and Belgium would build monuments and graveyards to their own and England's brave boys, and ploughmen in Northern France would always stop in reverence when they came across "English dead". England was granted sepulture perpetuelle for their cemeteries, which would become a chain of permanent graveyards along what had been the Western Front.
      Germany was not allowed to mourn her dead in such a way. The battlefields to the east were forbidden to them by the Bolshevik revolution. To the west, Germany was awarded no such courtesy.  No graveyards were dedicated to their eternal rest; France and Belguim would only reluctantly allow Germany to retrieve and bury bodies, which were usually interred in mass graves out of site. Their war memorials were relegated to churches and cathedrals, often integrating Hans Holbein's The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb. 

Holbein's Body of the Dead Christ

Mathis Grunewald's Lamentation and Entombment of Christ was also often used for German war memorials.

 Indeed, for nearly 100 years, Germany has not been permitted grief over its loss. Britain, France, and most of the rest of Europe have forgotten that despite the crimes committed by Germans in both wars, they were people as well. They "loved and were loved" the same as all people, and German mothers, wives, daughters and sisters lost sons, husbands, fathers, and brothers.  Even Germans themselves did not allow their fellow countrymen to mourn.  In 1924, the Germans attempted a national memorial to the dead as other countries had. Its dedication caused a outpouring of political protest.  The dedication speech by President Fredrich Ebert, who had lost two sons in the war, was thankfully heard out, but the two minutes of silence that followed was interrupted by the shouting of pro- and anti- war protests, which then descended into a riot that lasted all day.
     The greatest number of counted dead did not belong to Germany, the winner of that macabre contest is Serbia, the country where Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated and which started  the whole thing. Serbia's population before the war was 5 million, 15% of this was lost to war and disease, compared to 5-10% of France, Britain, and Germany. Fifteen percent! If any country has a Lost Generation, it would be Serbia.
     Historians will argue that the First World War had less of an effect than the Second. In part, that is true. Certainly there was less material damage, the rural fields where battles were soon returned to farms and pastureland. There was no bombing of cities like in Germany and Britain. Civilian populations were largely shielded from the worst and carried on with life as usual. And, save for the Armenian Christians of the Ottoman empire, no populations were forced to relocate or subjected to genocide. The effect that the First War had on the culture, however, was far greater than anything else, and far greater than the its successor.  The rational and generous culture of the European culture was permanently damaged, and through it  human culture as a whole was damaged. Pre-War Europe was defined by constitutionalism, rule of law, and representative government. Post-War Europe relinquished confidence in these and gave rise to totalitarianism, which had cropped up nearly everywhere by the time the War was only fifteen years gone. Totalitarianism really was just a continuation of the war, because it is war by other means. War by menace and deprivation of rights, rather than war by guns and battlefields.
   The Second War was really the latent infection of the culture damage coming to a head. Commanders in the Second World War were the junior officers of the First, who had marched of to war confident they would be victorious "before the leaves fall".  The Second War was worse than the first, because the world had already been broken. 

It's only a court martial....not man-eating lions.

"This Englishman, Patterson, is most brave, 

and is indeed the very essence of valor;

Lions do not fear lions, yet one glance from

 Patterosn Sahib cowed the bravest of them" 

~Roshan mistari, son of Kadur mistari Bakhsh, native of the village of Chanjalat *

  I have been watching The Story of the Jews with Simon Schama, a five part documentary series on the history of, well, Jews, from creation to the modern day. I am enjoying it immensely. If you have not seen this series, find a way to do so. Simon Schama is a wonderful historian, I have all three of his History of Britain books, (well thumbed) and have seen the television series based on those books about 10 times. The Story of the Jews equals if not surpasses the History of Britain.

  In the final episode, Schama is discussing Zionism and the founding of Israel as a state after the Second World War and the Holocaust.  That brought to my mind a man that I much admire who was a staunch Zionist even though he was not Jewish, he was Irish. He was Lieutenant-Colonel John Henry Patterson, D.S.O.

   Patterson is probably best well known for his involvement with two man-eating lions in 1898 while trying to build a railroad bridge across the Tsavo river in what is now Kenya (back then it was the British East Africa Protectorate). Because the lions were eating the workforce, it was up to Col. Patterson to eliminate the problem.  After much travail and more success than failure, the lions were finally shot and made into rugs. Yes, Patterson actually made lion rugs out of them and used them as such before donating them to the Field Museum in Chicago.

   That is only part of this man's story, however. After the bridge was finished, Patterson got involved in the Boer War where he served with the 20th Battalion, Imperial Yeomanry. His Boer War service earned the Distinguished Service Order. In the First World War, Patterson was commander of the Zion Mule Corps and the 38th Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers, also known as the Jewish Legion of the British Army. Though he was a Protestant, Patterson became heavily involved in Zionism at this time. He and his Jewish Legion served with distinction in the Gallipoli and Palestine campaigns.

He constantly dealt with antisemitism from his superiors and subordinates, and threatened several times to resign his commission to bring attention to the mistreatment of his men. One story in particular is of note. After a battle at Meggido (yes, that Meggido, better known as Armageddon) Patterson's brigade was being inspected by a brigadier who was famous for his hatred of Jews. Finally finding what he was looking for, a small infraction such as an unpolished button or an untied shoelace, the brigadier picked up the private by his lapels and screamed "You dirty little Jew!" in his face.   Patterson instantly gave the order to fix bayonets, and an about face. The offensive officer found himself in the midst of a hollow square formation, facing a wall of steel. Patterson then demanded an apology from the brigadier, who quickly apologized and then left.

   The man certainly had nerve. Patterson Sahib is most brave indeed.  Although somehow a court-martial doesn't seem that intimidating once you have faced man-eating lions. This story may be apocryphal, I have not been able to validate it yet. But I hope to find it in one of the two books Patterson wrote about these campaigns.  He retired from the army in 1920 after 35 years of service, still with the rank Lieutenant-Colonel. Certainly it is true that Patterson sacrificed any chances of promotion because of his insistence that his men be treated fairly.  

  After retirement, Patterson continued to support Zionism. He was a promoter of a Jewish army to fight the Nazis and stop the Holocaust as well as a member of The Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe. He was close friends with Benzion Netanyahu (father of the current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu) and godfather and namesake of Benzion's son Yonatan (i.e. "John") Netanyahu.

  John Henry Patterson went the way of all flesh on June 18, 1947, in Bel Air, California, less than a year before Israel became a state. It was his wish that he and his wife, who were cremated, be buried in Israel. As of this writing, this has not yet happened, but Patterson's grandson Alan Patterson, the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation, and several other organizations are working to honor his request.

  Lt.Col. Patterson was certainly not one to let personal ambition get in the way of doing what was right. And we may liken him to Tennyson's Sir Galahad "My strength is as the strength of ten, because my heart is pure."


*This is part of a Hindustani poem, really more of a psalm that was written by Roshan, a railroad worker in East Africa praising Col. Patterson for killing the lions.

 

 

One Hundred Years of War

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding  

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing           

Memory and desire, stirring       

Dull roots with spring rain.          

Winter kept us warm, covering          

Earth in forgetful snow, feeding               

A little life with dried tubers.

T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land. 1922

 Friends, family, distant, relations, coworkers, former classmates and anyone reading this.


   One hundred years ago, the world ended. In August, 1914 Western Civilization came to the beginning of its end.  Nearly 100 years of (relative) peace ended in a four year orgy of destruction, and nothing has been quite the same since the nightmare ended.  This is The Great War, later to be called the First World War, to distinguish it from its sequel ,its child, its result, the Second World War.

  Some historians will argue with you that the First World War actually began in 1754 with what Americans and British call the French and Indian War and the rest of Europe refer to as the Seven Years War. This is partly true, in the sense that the French and Indian War covered at least two continents, but once France and England had a prolonged scuffle over who owned what land in the New World, everyone carried on as before. The Great war was different, it is the first of the wars that broke the world.

   2014 also marks 100 years since the the most successful failure in exploration and discovery occurred. On the cusp of this great war in August 1914 Sir Ernest Shackleton and his companions set out on the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. Their mission was to be first men to cross the continent of Antarctica.  They ended up getting stuck in pack ice for two years and having to row back to civilization in a life boat. The miraculous thing was, all of them survived. The whole endeavor was so remarkable that T.S. Eliot even makes a veiled reference to Shackleton's Expedition in his seminal poem The Waste Land. This small group of men were probably the last tiny capsule of innocence, locked away in the fastness of polar ice and unaware of the crisis through which the world they knew was passing.

  I plan to take a journey through these two events. Show their causes, their effects, and get intimately involved with the people who lived through it. My guidebooks are The First World War by John Keegan, and South, by Ernest Shackleton.  Please follow me, friends, for however long it takes to walk this road.

 I cannot say how long it will take or how frequently I will write. But I will say I plan to at least write something when I come to the end of each chapter.  Another post should follow in a few days.

On Anniversaries

Much that once was is lost, for none now live to remember it. 

   I intended to write this back in April, for the centennial of the sinking of the Titanic.  Here it is now, and I shall expand on the original subject.

The past is the key to the present and the future, for instruction and inspiration.

   I consider myself privileged to be alive for the 100 year anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic.   One of my coworkers rolled her eyes and referred sarcastically to this obsession with the Titanic. Later on she said the movie was "just about her screwing around."  It's not about the ship, dearie, or the movies, it's about the real stories of real people.  If your lot wasn't so jaded and modernized you might realize that. Oh, and as for the movie, it's so much more than Rose and Jack.  It's the story of every person who was there.  And, I do like the fact that Rose takes Jack's name at the end and calls herself Rose Dawson.

 Although if you want love stories on Titanic, look no further than Isidor and Ida Strauss.  Mr. and Mrs. Strauss were in their 60s in 1912, and he was one of the owners of Macy's department store.  Ida refused to leave her husband when the call for women and children to the boats was given. They were last seen sitting on deck chairs holding hands before they were swept away by rising water.  I assume what is commonly referred to as "the old couple scene" in the movie (an older couple lying on a bed together as the water rushes in) is supposed to be Mr. and Mrs. Strauss. I can give you more, but I shall not belabor the point. 

 The point I was trying to make was how soon we forget.  In the weeks leading up to the centennial, I was shocked at the number of people I saw on the internet that had no idea Titanic was a real event, they thought it was just a movie.  My father said some of his students did not know it was a real event. One of the most famous, most tragic, and most costly (in monetary as well as human life) peacetime maritime disasters in history and you thought it was just a movie? My generation causes me to despair nearly every day, but this was worse than usual.  

  Moving on, the subject of anniversaries.  As I said, I consider myself privileged to see the centennial of the Titanic. I hope, if I live that long, the world lasts that long, or if the Lord tarries ect. to see the Bicentennial of the siege of the Alamo in 2036.  I will be in Texas that day, come the proverbial hell or high water. 

  On my Facebook page, I am currently covering the anniversary of the Falklands War. Thank goodness I caught it in time. And thank God he gave me open eyes and an inquisitive mind to follow the trail that began with a few sentences I saw in an old letter.  If I knew then what I know now, I would have done my final project for Latin American History on the Falklands War (and my perspective would have discomfited my very liberal teacher) The Falklands War is rather dear to me at the moment because of its causes, it was almost an aftershock of the World Wars.  Also, it is a highly controversial subject among the Lib Dems  because they think the British were so evil and colonial and they were so cruel to the Argentinians who were just trying to take back what was theirs and Margaret Thatcher personally murdered each Argentinian that died. Whatever, they are more than welcome to go live in Argentina themselves. 

  Speaking of the World Wars, we are two years away from the 100 year anniversary of the War to End all Wars, World War I.  In a way, it was more heinous and violent than its successor. People do not realize that this war, more than any other, practically changed the world overnight.  Nearly 100 years of peace ended in a four year orgy of destruction and when the world woke from the nightmare, nothing would ever again be as it was.  Take a look at the literature written immediately after.  T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland is a good place to start.

  There are no World War 1 veterans left alive, the last one died last year aged 110.  Are we going to forget so quickly what must be remembered? The past is the key to the present.  It is the key so we do not make past mistakes again. And it is the key because the past give us heroes. People to look up to, to emulate, stories that inspire us to act as they would have done in similar situations.  

Semper Recordor

The Wizards, the Vampires, the Eldar and the Eldila

There is a common saying that I have found to be generally true, the book is better than the movie.  Occasionally, there is a movie that is better than the book.  I have yet to experience one myself, but I am told there are a few out there.  That being said, I do wonder why people cannot bother to read a few select books that are based on very popular movies.

   I am writing in particular about The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia.  I am astounded by the number of people who have repeatedly seen the movies based on these books and can quote them verbatim but have never read or so much as touched the books.  They are, not surprisingly, people of my generation. Those of my parent's generation, really anyone born in the English-speaking world between about 1940 and 1980 grew up either reading The Hobbit and The Chronicles of Narnia or having them read to them. Sometime shortly around the time I was born, however, there was a disconnect.

  There have been many occasions when I have been in a discussion about these movies and I will mention something from the books.  The person with whom I am conversing will stammer and said "Well...I never read the books."  I don't know who is more embarrassed, me or them.  I remember two occasions in particular.  One we were discussing the most recent Narnia movie and I said "Yes I hope that they get a good Puddleglum for the next one.  A decent Marsh-Wiggle will make or break the movie." After a strained pause and a nervous laugh the reply was "I never read the books." I sighed inwardly and hastily steered the conversation elsewhere.  It seemed a safer option than tersely replying "Yeah, well maybe you should." and stalking away.  The other occasion I remember we were discussing The Lord of the Rings, and somehow the back stories of the characters came up.  I said something to the effect of :"Well yes, because Aragorn was a Numenorean." One of the people involved in the conversation replied rather jovially "Numa-numa-what? I never read the books." I counted to ten and ended the conversation soon after that.  Again, these were people of my age. Somehow I get the feeling that people my parents age and older would have understood me.

  Or is that true?  I was going to say that it is because people of my generation want the world fed to them in 30-second sounds bites and have not the patience to read a large tome or series of books through. But then I remembered the Narnia and Middle-Earth of my generation.  I am referring to the crap that is Twilight and the tripe that is Harry Potter. Yes! People my generation will read Harry Potter until the Crack of Doom and stand in line overnight to read the next Twilight novel before their friends do. The problem lies not in the media (for these two are movies as well) but in the content.

  Ten years ago when I was an old teenager and Harry Potter had first come out, I remember the controversy among Christians whether or not they should let their children read it.  The most common argument was "At least they are reading." What? That's the best you can do?! (Actually, if it is that hard to get your children to put down the video came console and read a book you have other problems.)  Instead of that, they should have been saying to their children "That's a good story, but here is a better one."  The crap that is Twilight and the tripe that is Harry Potter is just detailed and deep enough to be mildly interesting.  I can give you a laundry list of stories that are so much more than that.

 Enter the arguments that The Lord of the Rings is not a Christian story, Tolkien was a Catholic, I hate allegory, blah, blah, blah I have heard the same song and dance a hundred times. C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia are defenitely Christian stories, and not just for children although that is the target audience.  Some of the more sweet and complex Christian themes in them I did not see until I was older, and their majesty and sublimity caused me to sink to my knees. And once we are grown, Lewis' Ransom Trilogy (I dislike calling it The Space Trilogy because it is so much more than science fiction) is like Narnia the Sequel, or Learning about Aslan in Our Own World.  Even the protagonist is named Ransom for a reason. As for The Lord of the Rings, sure it's not a Christian story, JRRT never meant it to be.  He says so himself in the preface when he goes into detail about allegory versus applicability.  There are certainly applicable Christian themes.  And while we are on the subject of themes, the themes of LOTR are much better than anything in Twilight or Harry Potter.  Themes like good will always triumph over evil in the end; we do good things because they are right, not because people will like us or we will be rewarded; that above the reek and ruin of evil in the world exists a realm of light and glory that evil can never touch but only look at and gnaw on itself in repulsion; that one day the world will be remade and renewed and all that was ruined at the beginning will be healed.

  So I ask you, is it really that much harder to read about those things than it is to read or watch movies about wizards in school or sparkly vampires?

 Oh, and speaking of wizards, Gandalf would have never called anyone a Muggle.