Under an English Heaven (1972) – Simon & Schuster

_____After the cheering and the singing, Walter Hodge stepped forward and made a brief speech, followed by a reading of the Declaration of Independence, which began, “We stand before the Queen in the greatest humility, with the desire in our hearts to be faithful subjects to her.” It went on from that self-destruct opening to a recountal of the wrongs done Anguilla by St. Kitts and ended on a high note of nobility, poetry and confusion: “We pledge our lives and hearts to create a true democratic government, however small. If, for financial want, we must suffer, then let us suffer in silence.”
_____However small? A true democratic government, however small? What does that mean? It seems to work from the premise that the larger the government, the more democratic, an assumption that anyone who has ever dealt with the bureaucracies of the United States or Great Britain will regard with a certain skepticism. As to the final sentence about suffering financial want in silence, that was precisely what the Anguillans were not doing.
_____The Declaration of Independence was met with rousing cheers, and the next day telegrams were sent to Great Britain and the United States and various Commonwealth countries, saying, OVERWHELMING REFERENDUM CONFIRMS ABSOLUTE AND FINAL INDEPENDENCE OF ANGUILLA FROM THE FEDERATION OF ST. KITTS, NEVIS, ANGUILLA. THIS LEAVES NO LEGAL TIES WITH CROWN. WE WISH TO EXPLORE STATUS OF ASSOCIATED STATE OR OTHER ARRANGEMENT OF FREEDOM AND LOCAL AUTONOMY WITHIN THE COMMONWEALTH.
_____No more shilly-shallying. Anguilla had firmly declared that she was/wasn’t dependent/independent, had made an irrevocable decision and was willing to talk it over. And that’s definite.

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If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England’s, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.
____________________Rupert Brooke, “The Soldier”

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