A recent decision by a British court will have Britain’s enemies all over the planet in stitches of laughter. The court upheld a case brought against the Ministry of Defense (mod) by the parents of a British soldier who died of heatstroke on the battlefield.

“Judges have thrown out a government appeal by deciding that the Human Rights Act can apply to British troops, even on the battlefield. The judgment the mod appealed against said ‘right to life’ meant it had a legal duty to supply proper equipment. The rulings centered on a case brought by the family of [a British soldier] who died of heatstroke while serving with the Territorial Army in Iraq in 2003” (bbc News, May 18).

Thus, the nation once most renowned for the code of honor within its regimental tradition and the lion-like bravery of its fighting forces in battle is reduced to the image of a silly dove (Hosea 7:11).

One has to wonder if such a judicial attitude had prevailed during World War ii—in which British soldiery often entered battle grossly underequipped—whether the rule of the tyrant who could have overwhelmed Britain would have produced results any worse than the present tyranny of the feminist, homophile, politically correct tyranny that presently dominates the British judiciary.

Under such a judicial regime, would Winston Churchill—whose only promise to the British public was of “blood, toil, tears and sweat,” in the face of their impending battle for survival against overwhelming odds—have been arraigned before the courts and brought to book for crimes against the human rights of every British subject, let alone the nation’s fighting men?

Had the parents of just one airman who fought in the Battle of Britain, deprived of adequate rest and the basic comforts of life, often in freezing conditions, fighting to save his nation from the Nazi aggressor while squeezed into the tiny cockpit of his Spitfire, even considered bringing such a charge against the Ministry of Defense back then, they would have been laughed to scorn and called traitors to boot!

And what of the Great War, World War i, and the “human rights” of those who fought in the mud, slime and gore of the trenches in Europe and across the fazing heat of the desert sands in northern Africa? How many died from not only heat exhaustion, but just sheer, wanton exhaustion from the combined effects of dehydration, sleep deprivation, inadequate food and shelter, let alone a lack of “proper equipment”?

Then there was Gallipoli, where the Anzac troops were landed on the wrong beach, facing withering fire from the entrenched Turks pouring down on them from the craggy cliff battlements above. Ion Idriess wrote of the scene in the aftermath of that carnage: “The beach is strewn with discarded equipment, broken rifles, numerous mess tins and water bottles, all with shrapnel holes through them, lengths of barbed wire, jagged stakes, torn haversacks, and now and again the trampled-on felt hat with the little hole and black blood patch. These are the relics of the landing of the first battalions and each tragic bit of flotsam tells its own story” (The Desert Campaign).

Elsewhere, Idriess speaks of the infestations of body lice and maggots as big as caterpillars infesting the trenches filled with the mixed mire of mud, blood and the stench of rotting flesh. Yet not one parent brought a case against the home government for breach of any soldier son’s human rights during the Great War. They all regarded those sons as heroes for having fought, suffered and too often died in the service of king and country.

Oh! How far the British lion has descended down the slippery slope of moral equivalence to the point where a court of the land can charge the Ministry of Defense of its own nation with breach of human rights for the death of a soldier due to heat exhaustion! And what a can of worms this inane judicial finding is going to open up within Britain’s politically correct society! Now Britain faces the prospect of any soldier—or of his parents—claiming breach of human rights for that which historically has been the expected sacrifice of members of its fighting force in battle.

War, by definition, involves conflict between nations. A warrior is a fighting man. A soldier is a man serving in an army for the security and protection of his nation. War historian John Keegan has observed, after a career studying war and fighting men, that “Soldiers are not as other men …. [T]he culture of the warrior can never be that of civilization itself. All civilizations owe their origins to the warrior; their cultures nurture the warriors who defend them” (A History of War). Historically, that nurturing has involved not denigrating, but rather cultivating the warrior tradition.

The warrior tradition has always involved self-sacrifice in the defense of bride, family, clan, tribe or nation. Thus the soldier operates in a culture outside of the norms of traditional society, often under conditions that the codes of law that govern the culture of the civilian are simply not designed to address.

When operating as a civilian, the soldier out of uniform is bound by the civil law of society. When operating as a soldier in defense of his country, different rules have historically applied on the battlefront. This latest decision by a British civil court crosses the traditional bounds that separate civilian and battlefront conditions. It ignores the tradition that Keegan documents as part of the history of war from ancient times, that “the culture of the warrior can never be that of the civilization itself.” It breaks the tradition that “cultures nurture the warriors who defend them.” It contains no sense of the warrior code of honor, of willing self-sacrifice. Rather it denigrates the whole warrior culture by treating the soldier as but an ordinary civilian. Such a ludicrous legal decision can only lead to a further denigration of morale in an already morally depleted British fighting force.

Full well the prophecies of your Bible leap into stark, current-day perspective. Such decisions are but a true indication of the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy for the Anglo-Saxons in the very times that we are living through today: “For, behold, the Lord, the Lord of hosts, doth take away … The mighty man, and the man of war, the judge … The captain of fifty, and the honourable man …” (Isaiah 3:1-3).

In this civilization of man, when a nation ceases to “nurture the warriors who defend” it, there can be but one ultimate outcome. Even as the Prophet Ezekiel declared, envisioning conditions extant in our day, the time is fast approaching when, as the call to battle is sounded, with the enemy pounding on the door, they will have “blown the trumpet, even to make all ready; but none goeth to the battle: for my wrath is upon all the multitude thereof” (Ezekiel 7:14).

For a deeper understanding of why Anglo-Saxon society is descending so speedily into a state of increasing weakness and increasing dominance by other world powers, read our publications The United States and Britain in Prophecy and Hosea—Reaping the Whirlwind.