Royal Navy

William Pitt, The Elder, 18th Century Prime Minister of Britain, offers many lessons for American statesmen today.

Westminster Abbey recently held a commemorative service to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Royal Navy submariners’ continuous at-sea nuclear deterrent, carrying the Trident nuclear missile system. Some Christian anti-nuclear activists were unhappy.

In this military vignette, originally published in Christianity and Crisis on April 19, 1943, John Joseph Stoudt depicts the religiosity of men confronting their own mortality. The Chaplain employs the clearest ritual means of communicating the weight of their task, the nature of their profession: Communion. In taking up the body and the blood, the gathered soldiers experience camaraderie in a common meal, and unanimously acknowledge of the enduring, indisputable value of sacrifice; both God’s and their own.

What does NATO need to do going forward? The short answer: more and less.