Fanfare for the Common Man
"The Century of the Common Man"Victoria was dead. Edward was King and not much had changed. Men and women, bored by decades of peace, by prosperity, by idleness, yet motivated by a love of family, of country and freedom, prepared for a war that was, by and large, unexpected. Eager to engage the enemy, sons and brothers, fathers and husbands, took up arms to protect the things most important to them. Their land, their livelihoods, their liberty. Their loved ones.
This was World War I. To rally the troops, to inspire and encourage those at home, the British composer Eugene Goossens proposed a fanfare to be written and played at the opening of every orchestral concert.
The War to End All Wars ended. There were no victors. England lost three quarters of a million men in the effort. A truce was proposed, a laying down of arms. And to make it significant, men who had already tired of fighting, pretended to keep up the battle so that the guns could cease their firing at a time that no one would forget. Remember, remember the 11th of November: The eleventh hour, of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. It was a war to remember, indeed, and many prayed there would never be another.
But of course there was.
Wilson had promised not to enter the first war. It was inevitable we should. Equally inevitable was our participation in that second war. But how to rally our forces once more? How to encourage those at home to sacrifice their fathers and sons, their brothers and husbands?
It was Goossens idea to write another fanfare. He contacted fellow composer Aaron Copeland and asked if he would not consider writing it.
Copeland agreed, and his composition was inspired by US Vice President Harry Wallace's speech The Century of the Common Man, wherein Mr. Wallace delineated our history of Revolution, from the French Revolution, to the Russian Revolution, to the Revolution against Communist evils.
Things have changed a lot since then. Wallace's speech is full of Biblical references, calls to the duty of the Christian to promote Democracy, comparisons of the Nazi regime to Satan's army and of the oppressed to slaves. Much of his language would be cause for legal suit today. Is that a good thing? Personally I think not, but that's a debate for another time.
Wallace, in his speech, delineates the four basic freedoms for which those Revolution were fought, and for which we should still feel compelled to fight: freedom of religion, freedom of expression, and freedom from the fear of secret police.
Do we have these freedoms today? Would we fight for them? Should we? Freedom is still much in demand, of course. But things seem to me to rather have flipped. Religious tolerance is on the wane, the rights that are most often fought for today are not always for the greater good of man, but rather in protection of our immediate gratification. But at what cost?
Still, I like the idea of the common man rising to make demands of his oppressors. I like what I see in the industries pertaining to the arts, where artists, musicians, writers take a stand to protect their own work. Where artisans strive to keep a bit of themselves in their finished work, to keep it personal. I think it's a long time coming. I'm tired of music and literature and art produced 'for the masses', reduced to its lowest common denominator so that it will appeal to 'popular' taste.
And yet, the pursuit of righteous living seems to be largely at an end. It worries me. We complain as a people about the corruption of our leaders, yet where will those of tomorrow come from if we are not the ones to raise them? Once upon a time we were concerned with the next generation, determined to make the world a better place for them. Is that still the case? And what will our children raise their flags to defend? At the moment, mine are very nearly prepared to raise an army to defend their t.v. and gaming privileges. I'm not sure this is a worthy pursuit.
Generally speaking, there are little rebellions going on all over the world today. They don't seem very organised. People are generally unhappy, but I'm not convinced they know exactly why. I don't presume to provide the answers, but I do have a few theories.
What would I fight for? I have already fought (and for the most part won) the right to write, and to publish my work as I would wish to write it, with an aim at encouraging, enlightening, entertaining and inspiring. But I would also wish for a greater tolerance toward the ideologies of others. We think we are a more open minded people. By what I see in government and society, with the rise of rationalism and the attacks toward religion and faith, I don't see this as true. I do feel that in some places, people are becoming kinder, more understanding. Others are quick to judge and to make claims in violent adulation against those who lack understanding, or who understand things differently. I know I have grown by leaps and bounds in my understanding of certain social issues. But I didn't get there by being yelled at, or bombarded with malicious diatribe by those who would be hypocritical enough to call me the 'hater'. There is a lot of hypocrisy abounding. My heart was softened, my mind opened, by those who were kind and patient enough to maintain a dialogue with me, to keep the lines of communication open, even when my words, unknown to me, caused offense.
Our battles today are likely not going to be fought with weapons. They'll be fought with minds and words. But sparring over a theological battlefield solves nothing. Let's open the lines of communication, agree to disagree if we must, but to truly be tolerant as we have for so long aimed to become, that so many of us pride ourselves in being.
I believe in the common man. And I believe he has the superior strength of will and intellect to choose the better way. That is what I am fighting for. My fanfare is a call to awareness and true concern for our fellow men, and for those who will come after.
What is yours?
The following is an excerpt of Harry Wallace's speech
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It can be read in its entirety here.
This is a fight between a slave world and a free world. Just as the United States in 1862 could not remain half slave and half free, so in 1942 the world must make its decision for a complete victory one way or the other.
As we begin the final stages of this fight to the death between the free world and the slave world, it is worth while to refresh our minds about the march of freedom for the common man. The idea of freedom — the freedom that we in the United States know and love so well — is derived from the Bible with its extraordinary emphasis on the dignity of the individual. Democracy is the only true political expression of Christianity.
The prophets of the Old Testament were the first to preach social justice. But that which was sensed by the prophets many centuries before Christ was not given complete and powerful political expression until our nation was formed as a Federal Union a century and a half ago. Even then, the march of the common people had just begun. Most of them did not yet know how to read and write. There were no public schools to which all children could go. Men and women can not be really free until they have plenty to eat, and time and ability to read and think and talk things over.
Satan now is trying to lead the common man of the whole world back into slavery and darkness. For the stark truth is that the violence preached by the Nazis is the devil's own religion of darkness. So also is the doctrine that one race or one class is by heredity superior and that all other races or classes are supposed to be slaves.
In a twisted sense, there is something almost great in the figure of the Supreme Devil operating through a human form, … who has the daring to spit straight into the eye of God and man. But the Nazi system has a heroic position for only one leader. By definition only one person is allowed to retain full sovereignty over his own soul. All the rest are stooges — they are stooges who have been mentally and politically degraded, and who feel that they can get square with the world only by mentally and politically degrading other people. These stooges are really psychopathic cases. Satan has turned loose upon us the insane.
The march of freedom of the past one hundred and fifty years has been a long-drawn-out people's revolution. In this Great Revolution of the people, there were the American Revolution of 1775, The French Revolution of 1792, The Latin-American revolutions of the Bolivarian era, The German Revolution of 1848, and the Russian Revolution of 1917. Each spoke for the common man in terms of blood on the battlefield. Some went to excess. But the significant thing is that the people groped their way to the light. More of them learned to think and work together.
The people's revolution aims at peace and not at violence, but if the rights of the common man are attacked, it unleashed the ferocity of a she-bear who has lost a cub.
The people, in their millennial and revolutionary march toward manifesting here on earth the dignity that is in every human soul, hold as their credo the Four Freedoms enunciated by President Roosevelt in his message to Congress on January 6, 1941. These four freedoms are the very core of the revolution for which the United Nations have taken their stand. We who live in the United States may think there is nothing very revolutionary about freedom of religion, freedom of expression, and freedom from the fear of secret police. But when we begin to think about the significance of freedom from want for the average man, then we know that the revolution of the past one hundred and fifty years has not been completed, either here in the United States or in any other nation in the world. We know that this revolution can not stop until freedom from want has actually been attained.
… [A]nd when the time of peace comes, The citizen will again have a duty, The supreme duty of sacrificing the lesser interest for the greater interest of the general welfare. Those who write the peace must think of the whole world. There can be no privileged peoples. We ourselves in the United States are no more a master race than the Nazis. And we can not perpetuate economic warfare without planting the seeds of military warfare. We must use our power at the peace table to build an economic peace that is just, charitable and enduring.
I need say little about the duty to fight. Some people declare, and Hitler believes, that the American people have grown soft in the last generation.
The people's revolution is on the march, and the devil and all his angels can not prevail against it. They can not prevail, for on the side of the people is the Lord.
