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When I first started researching this book, I read through 8 articles before I found out what the controversy was all about. August 4, 1914 was the date that England entered WWI. The debate over Ford's use of August 4th is still apparently boiling. Ford claimed to have finished the ms in June, 1914. Mizner sets the date at July. The book was published in March 1915. Theoretically, if Ford wanted the reference emphatically, he could have made a change. However, there is apparently no textual evidence for wholesale substitution. Ford always claimed that the date was a coincidence. I then found this connection in an article by James B. Scott: "Coincidence of Irony? Ford’s use of August 4th in The Good Soldier." In this article, Scott refers to and article by T.A. Hanzo, 1966 in the Sewanee Review, regarding the date. Hanzo links the date to the reading for Aug. 4th in the Catholic missal; Timothy II, Chapter 4. Upon reading the epistle, especially chapters 2 and 4, the connection is compelling. Ford was nominally a Catholic, although more in sympathy with the Albigensian tradition (Cathars being burned to death in an inquisition probably appealed to his passionate nature, and Cathar mysticism probably appealed to his romantic nature) than with Rome. I have excerpted some of the more relevant parts below. What I have left out are the several places where Paul refers to being betrayed in action or in testimony, which appeals in an autobiographical reading of the text. Either way, it does suggest the 'turning' of Leonora and Nancy on Edward in the last chapters. To me, this connection is too apt to be dismissed, and I find it a much more satisfactory allusion than the date England entered WWI. That England did enter WWI on August 4, 1914, after Germany invaded Belgium on the 3rd must indeed have been a coincidence. One which benefits the text, but nonetheless, a coincidence. A sentence that complains about the Belgian government's regulation of the trains (in the first chapter of The Good Soldier) was changed due to a surge in sympathy for Beligium. From St. Paul’s Second Epistle to Timothy: in The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha, Revised Standard Edition, ed. Herbert G. May and Bruce M. Metzger, Oxford University Press, NY, 1973, 1977; 1446-9. Chapter 2 – You then, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus, and what you have heard from me before many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No soldier on service gets entangled in civilian pursuits, since his aim is to satisfy the one who enlisted him. An athlete is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules. It is the hard-working farmer who ought to have the first share of the crops. Think over what I say, for the Lord will grant you understanding in everything. … Have nothing to do with stupid, senseless controversies; you know that they breed quarrels. And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kindly to everyone, an apt teacher, forbearing, correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant that they will repent and come to know the truth, and they may escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will. Chapter 3 – But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of stress. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, inhuman, implacable, slanderers, profligates, fierce, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding the form of religion but denying the power of it. Avoid such people. For among them are those who make their way into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and swayed by various impulses, who will listen to anybody and can never arrive at a knowledge of the truth. As Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth, men of corrupt mind and counterfeit faith; but they will not get very far, for their folly will be plain to all, as was that of those two men. Now you have observed my teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness, my persecutions, my sufferings, what befell me at Antioch, at Iconium, and at Lystra, what persecutions I endured; yet from them all the Lord rescued me. Indeed all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evil men and imposters will go on from bad to worse, deceivers and deceived. … Chapter 4 – I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word, be urgent in season and exhort, be unfailing in patience and in teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths. As for you, always be steady, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry. For I am already on the point of being sacrificed; the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that Day and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing. … |