War of words takes aim at our hearts and minds – as much today as a century ago

The way language is used has consequences: that’s one of the lessons we should be paying most attention to in the aftermath of the First World War observances. The celebrations to mark the centenary of the Armistice agreement that brought WWI to a close have been profoundly moving. Those who made the supreme sacrifice have been remembered with proper dignity and also, on occasions, with great imagination.

So, what about war and language? I first became interested in the subject when I was researching and writing the biography of George MacLeod, founder of the Iona Community.

Lord MacLeod, arguably one of the greatest Scots of the 20th Century, is an intriguing case. MacLeod came from a dynasty which had provided five Moderators for the Kirk. His accountant father, John MacLeod, became a Tory MP.

When the First World War broke out on August 4 1914, George MacLeod, a student at Oxford University intended for the law, signed up with the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders at the age of 19.

Like many other young men, he fancied a bit of glory in what was expected to be a short war. What he encountered instead was slaughter on an industrial scale.

Writing to his son at the front, John MacLeod, MP and Kirk elder, said of the Germans that “besides being the vilest race the world has ever seen, they are the stupidest”.

Unwilling to challenge his father’s racist presumptions, the young George MacLeod was in no doubt about his Christian duty. From the trenches he wrote to his father condemning “mouse-eyed conscientious objectors” and urging no mercy for “the Boche”.

As the slaughter continued, the dehumanising rhetoric was ramped up. In order to persuade young men to get out of their trenches every morning in order to kill other young men, it was necessary that they should be fed a continuous diet of propaganda that demonised the enemy.

Reality, though, could not always be kept at bay. MacLeod was involved in the hellish Third Battle of Ypres.

When his commanding officer was killed, Adjutant MacLeod took over immediately, showing conspicuous gallantry. Fifteen out of 20 officers were lost, and 330 men out of 400 failed to return.

George MacLeod was awarded the Military Cross and the Croix de Guerre. His jingoistic father would be knighted.

MacLeod returned home a hero. But his experience of the brutality of war had given him much to think about. His reflection led him to give up his law studies and become a minister of the Kirk.

When he was appointed minister of Govan Old Parish Church in Glasgow, he was shocked by the unemployment and poverty he saw all around him. By the mid-1930s, MacLeod – who had long abandoned the demonising war rhetoric he had once endorsed – had outed himself as a pacifist and a socialist. The family script had been well and truly torn up.

The questions for us now are these: are there signs that extreme racist rhetoric and antiSemitism are once more haunting the streets of Europe?

Is it the case that the divisive rhetoric coming from the White House on a daily basis is as mendacious as critics allege?

Is the so-called “leader of the free world” currently a danger to the peace of the world?

Is Donald Trump’s description of the press as “the enemy of the people” an incitement to anti-democratic violence?

It is worth turning to the great George Orwell for guidance. “Political language,” he wrote, “is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable”.

Orwell asked people to cling to the truth, especially at a time when truth was under attack.

“Being in a minority, even in a minority of one,” he wrote “did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad”.

We should also attend to the words of ReichMarshall Hermann Goering: “Naturally, the common people don’t want war, but after all is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag people along.

“The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy.

“All you have to do is to tell them that they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and for exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.”

The message of warfare down through the ages is that vigilance is required to read the runes properly. Fascism and Communism thrive when democracy is overthrown and truth is derided.

I like one banner that was held up during a recent demonstration: “First they came for the journalists – I don’t know what happened after that.”

Well, after that, there is a path that leads to mass graves. We have had more than enough of that.

The words of the prophets are written not just on the subway walls but in the texts of ancient wisdom.

Are there signs that extreme racist rhetoric and anti-Semitism are once more haunting the streets of Europe?

The Tyne Cot Cemetery in Ypres, Belgium, with its row upon row of crosses provides a stark illustration of the cost of the First World War