Nothing simple

Friday, January 8th., Comarques, Thorpe-le-Soken.

This is the sort of thing we must expect in war time. Yesterday afternoon Dr. H. called in a state of great excitement to tell me that the village was seething with the news that R. was pro-German, and taking advantage of his position as chauffeur to the military representative to transmit secret information as to English plans through his sweetheart, a German girl, to the German authorities. H. Believed it, or half-believed it.

I wrote to the Police Inspector last night and he called to see me today. He said he was constantly having complaints about signalling etc., all absurd. I told him that R. was engaged to an English girl and that the whole thing was idiotic. He said he had received a letter about it (signed) and had to make a few enquiries, but expected of course no result. A very decent sort of chap.

What does it tell us about human nature? Really only what we already know, but are generally unprepared to admit, that people will tend to reinforce their own sense of identity by singling out some other person, or group, for demonisation. Just look at the way Jews have been treated for centuries. And war is the perfect medium for such behaviour to proliferate. I hear that even the royal family are changing their name in an effort not to attract accusations of 'disloyalty'.

I have been thinking about health as a concept. Tricky thing to define when you start to think beneath the surface. In fact the more I have thought about it the less useful a concept I think it is. My thinking was triggered by browsing in some books on ancient history. It seems for the Greeks and Romans that health was very much a physical thing and was largely a matter of 'balance', of the bodily fluids; and of course the gods could intervene either way. Nowadays we have a more 'mechanical' approach. We see the person as more or less a machine to be maintained and, where necessary, corrected. And the science of psychology has arisen with the inference that the mind can be regarded separately. I am suspicious of that way of thinking myself. But I must admit to being nonplussed when trying to decide if I am 'healthy' or not.