On April 25, 1599, Oliver Cromwell was born into England’s landed gentry. The great religious poet John Milton praised him as “Cromwell, our chief of men, who through a cloud, ……… To peace and truth Thy glorious way has ploughed” whereas Winston Churchill condemned him as a “dictator”, writing “Upon all of us there still lies ‘the curse of Cromwell.‘ “.
Cromwell grew to become a strong ruler in difficult times. He genuinely believed in liberty, writing in 1650: “Your pretended fear lest error should step in, is like the man that would keep all the wine out of the country lest men should be drunk. It will be found an unjust and unwise jealousy, to deny a man the liberty he hath by nature upon a supposition that he may abuse it.”
Seven weeks before he died he expressed great disillusionment with the realities of power, telling parliament in 1658: “I would have been glad ……. to have kept a flock of sheep, rather than undertook such a Government as this is.”
Lest we forget the truth.
The Truth. In all its complexity. The impossibility of living up to Utopian dreams for any mortal human.
On April 25, 1915, courageous Australian diggers began sacrificing their lives to serve the needs of the British Empire. About 62,000 died in World War One in the following years. (Over one percent of the nations population.) About 156,00 were wounded, gassed or taken prisoner. Those figures combined are over half of the 416,809 men who enlisted. They were all volunteers.
Lest we forget the truth.
All of our traditions make us who we are.
Trying to be better is a part of that.
Geoff Fox, 25th April, 2022, a refugee in Terra Nullius from my true home.
FREEDOM, DEMOKRASI AND CIVILISED HUMANITY 