The First Thing in the Lisbon Treaty

This week's Irish Catholic features a brief and infuriating letter from one Patricia O'Brien fron Dublin's Bayside, which those of us who read The Irish Times had the questionable pleasure of reading a fortnight ago:

'Dear Editor [it was 'Madam' last time],
The EU Constitution/Lisbon Treaty studiously omits any reference to God or Europe's Christian history and heritage from its preamble.
I for one had no choice but to vote No.
Yours etc,
Patricia O'Brien,
Bayside, Dublin 13.'

When this claptrap first appeared in the Irish Times on 20 June it was dismissed the following day with a letter from one Alex Staveley who said

'Patricia O'Brien (June 20th) says she voted No because the treaty "omits any reference to God or Europe's Christian history and heritage from its preamble". Her argument is the equivalent of an atheist voting No because there is no reference to Richard Dawkins's books outselling those by any contemporary theologian or a Muslim voting no because there is no reference to the Islamic conquest of Spain, which meant classical Greek philosophical texts were translated into Latin and eventually found their way into the Renaissance.

We really need more constructive and feasible suggestions from the No voters if we are to move forward'

Mr Staveley may have overplayed his hand for rhetorical effect here, though it's not a bad hand, but I tend to think you should never play an ace when a two will do. The very first amendment to the Treaty on European Union -- that's the Maastricht Treaty, for those of you with long memories -- detailed in the Lisbon Treaty is as follows:

'1) The preamble shall be amended as follows:
(a) the following text shall be inserted as the second recital:
"Drawing inspiration from the cultural, religious, and humanist inheritance of Europe, from which we have developed the universal values of the inviolable and inalienable rights of the human person, freedom, democracy, equality and the rule of law,"'

Yes, that's the very first thing of substance in the entire Lisbon Treaty: an acknowledgement of Europe's religious heritage. And let's face it, what is Europe's religious heritage if it is not Christian? That's not to gloss over the importance of the Jewish, Muslin, and indeed Pagan contributions to European life over the centuries, but on balance and allowing for hyperbole I think it pretty much has to be agreed that Hilaire Belloc was right when he declared 'the Faith is Europe and Europe is the Faith'.

It seems that Ms O'Brien, like so many others, voted not against the Lisbon Treaty, but against some phantom treaty that existed only in her febrile imagination.

I have very little patience with people who vote against things not because they don't understand them, but because they don't bother to try understanding them!

On Ergonomic Sandwiches

During a brief idle moment in work earlier today, feeling a need for a moment's respite from the Sisyphean task of sorting out the storeroom, I popped into the kitchen where one of the girls was assembling a battery of triangular sandwiches for the regulars.

Remembering The Mezzanine, I told of her Nicholson Baker's theory of triangular sandwiches, as expressed by his narrator:

'Now, why was diagonal cutting better than cutting straight across? Because the corner of a triangularly cut slice gave you an ideal first bite. In the case of a rectangular toast, you had to angle the shape into your mouth, as you angle a big dresser through a hall doorway: you had to catch one corner of your mouth with one corner of the toast and then carefully turn the toast, drawing the mouth open with it so that its other edge could clear; only then did you chomp down. Also, with a diagonal slice, most of the tapered bite was situated right up near the front of your mouth, where you wanted it to be as you began to chew; with the rectangular slice, a burdensome fraction was riding out of control high on the dome of the tongue. One subway stop before mine, I concluded that there had been a logic behind the progress away from the parallel and toward the diagonal cut, and that the convention was not, as it might first have appeared, merely an affectation of short-order cooks.'
- Nicholson Baker, The Mezzanine, 53.

Eyes widened with delight as I burbled away, and as I finished our sandwich-maker burst out, 'That's so true! I'm always going to cut sandwiches that way now! I always thought people were just being fancy doing that! Wow!'

I'm rather inclined to do the same.

Land of Liberty

America's Independence Day, for whatever reason, always makes me think of Samuel Johnson's wryly rhetorical question of 'how is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?' It usually gets me thinking too of France's astounding contribution to the colonies' war for independence; it never ceases to amaze me how this tends to be forgotten, glossed over, or ignored.

The American War of Independence could not have been won without the support of foreign volunteers like Lafayette, without French supplies in the first two years of the war, without the threat to Britain's flank that France posed after France formally declared war on Britain in 1778, and without the crucial involvement of French manpower, money, and military expertise at the Battle of Yorktown, the War of Independence's decisive encounter.

'The strategy of the campaign was Rochambeau's; the French fleet was there as a result of his arrangements; the tactics of the battle were his; the American army was present because he had lent money to Washington; in total naval and military participants the French outnumbered the Americans between three and four to one. Yorktown was Rochambeau's victory.'

The Statue of Liberty is a reminder of how, thanks to the courage of men like Lafayette, 'Humanity has won its battle. Liberty now has a country.'

And, to be fair, on balance he was right.

A few years ago I had a very odd conversation on a bus with a former head of the F.B.I., as you do, and among other things we got into discussing history and the ways historians work; he recommended me to read Pauline Meier's American Scripture: How America Declared its Independence from Britain, a book he suspected was a superb example of historical craftsmanship. It's certainly a fine piece of work, and a marvellous explanation of how the Declaration of Independence came to be written, and rewritten, and canonised as holy writ. It's well worth the reading, if you ever get a chance.

One thing that Meier picks up on is how Congress adjusted Jefferson's original draft to add a couple of extra references to God in the final paragraph of the Declaration; despite that, though, the reference in the second paragraph to our having been endowed with inalienable rights by our Creator was Jefferson's own, although its final form too was modified by Congress. It's something to remember, though, when we talk about rights -- if our rights do not come from God, whence do they arise?

There's a Little Black Spot on the Sun Today

I don't think there are many people out there who'd argue that J.K. Rowling, for all her virtues, is one of the great prose stylists of our time. Among other things, I've heard it sneered that she's never met an adverb she didn't like, and there are few more generally acknowledged hallmarks of bad writing than the casual deployment of adverbs. Rather than cluttering our writing by saddling our verbs with adverbs, it tends to be thought and taught, we simply ought to use better verbs. While such literary rules are perhaps best treated as well-meant advice, especially given how Ms Rowling's sales might be said to speak for themselves, there are times when her adverbial addiction can be obscenely obtrusive, especially when you read aloud.

There's a chapter in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, either where Hagrid tells the starring trio about his quest to the Giants, or else where he introduces them to Grawp, and if you read it aloud you'll be staggered at the apparently inability to leave a verb alone. When writing becomes that obvious, it's surely bad writing.

But here's the thing. A few months back I was reading Clive James's marvellous Cultural Amnesia: Notes in the Margin of My Time, and was intrigued by his short essay on Evelyn Waugh, of whom he says: 'Nobody ever wrote a more unaffectedly elegant English; he stands at the height of English prose; its hundreds of years of steady development culminate in him.'

A Handful of Dust has been gathering dust on my shelves since 1997, so just last week I finally shoved it in my bag and took it with me to read on the bus; I devoured it in a couple of days, dazzled by what struck me as a cynical, embittered P.G. Wodehouse. How had I never read any Waugh before? And how had I neglected this slight volume for so long?

For all Waugh's brilliance, though, I couldn't help but be struck by this paragraph:

'Muddy sea between Trinidad and Georgetown and the ship lightened of cargo rolled heavily in the swell. Dr Messinger took to his cabin once more. Rain fell continuously and a slight mist enclosed them so that they seemed to move in a small puddle of brown water; the foghorn sounded regularly through the rain. Scarcely a dozen passengers remained on board and Tony prowled disconsolately about the deserted decks or sat alone in the music room, his mind straying back along the path he had forbidden it, to the tall elm avenue at Hetton and the budding copses.'
Evelyn Waugh, A Handful of Dust, 168

It's striking, isn't it? Rolled heavily; fell continuously; sounded regularly; prowled disconsolately. The next paragraph tells us that black stevedores 'grunted rhythmically' and that West Indians 'trotted busily'. Is this bad writing? Or is it just Waugh knowing what he's doing? I can't decide.

The Thirteenth Nation

I realise it's a little bit sad, but shortly after the Euro coins became available, I became an accidental collector of them. In truth, if you've known me for long this won't really surprise you. I've had a weakness for unusual coins since I was about twelve, and having studied Roman history hasn't done anything to lessen that.

It was a casual thing, at first. I was working in the pub, infuriating customers that New Year's Day with jovial allusions to the national campaigns to get us used to our new currency; 'the Euro,' I'd say, 'your money,' as I handed over their change.

As things settled over the next week or so, I became intrigued by how different the coins could be, as coins backed with Irish harps were interspersed with ones backed with German eagles, French women, Italian artistry, sundry monarchs and heads of state, and best of all that wonderful Greek coin-within-a-coin. The Belgian coins were definitely the dullest, I decided, concluding that as the British, were they ever to get with the programme, would almost certainly decide to follow a similar pattern, it was best for now if they stayed on the sidelines, brandishing their marvellous two-pound coin.

Foreign euro coins began to accumulate on my bookshelf -- a small pile at first, and then, as I admitted what I was doing, with some speed. I was going to collect them all. Sure, I didn't stand a snowball's chance in Hell of getting my hands on the coins minted by Monaco, San Marino, and the Vatican, but surely I could just watch the tills carefully in the hope of gathering the ninety-six coins minted by the twelve members of the Union that had adopted the new currency.

Eventually, I assembled the set, the Finnish coppers being given me as a friend and the almost equally rare Luxembourg coins being acquired while waiting for a flight at Hahn airport.

Slovenia started minting Euro coins a year-and-a-half ago, but it was only yesterday that I finally saw one, eagerly plucking it from the till and chucking in a 50c of my own. Nice, isn't it? The mountain, in case you're interested, is Triglav, the highest mountain in Slovenia, which is also featured on the national flag and coat of arms, and the quote on the coin is from a famous song about the mountain by a Catholic priest who's regarded as the father of Slovenian mountaineering, and who played a key role in making Triglav central to Slovenian identity; I have no idea why the Constellation of Cancer is on the coin.

Anyway, I guess this means I have seven more coins to collect.

Happy Canada Day, by the way. Yes, I've been listening to Tragically Hip. There are some things one must do, after all.