The Path of Peace: Walking the Western Front Way

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IT IS very easy to lead “blunt” lives, he believes. “One thing I’ve noticed, writing about Prime Ministers, most people don’t really think through what it is they are doing. Life just happens.” (His books include biographies of Winston Churchill, John Major, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, and David Cameron.) At German cemeteries of the First World War on the Western Front there are 3,000 grave markers with the Star of David. Every Prime Minister I’ve written about has said they will regret they didn’t have more time to reflect. And, for me, the heart of reflection is faith.” He has a historian’s enthusiasm and sharp eye for spotting good stories, many from the battlefields he is passing by

Out of an estimated Anglo-Jewish community of around 250,000, about 50,000 Jews enlisted. Many fought with the Jewish Brigade in Mandate Palestine. But others fought and died on the Western Front. Seldon’s book ends by reflecting on the tragedy of a world where history seems doomed to repeat itself: in this particular case, with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. (Seldon’s own family hailed originally from that region: ‘One hundred years earlier my grandparents had fled west from near Kyiv in search of peace. Now their descendants beat the same path.’) As he concludes: when peace comes, our government might combine with the French government to make one long avenue between the lines from the Vosges to the sea….I would make a fine broad road in the ‘No-Mans Land’ between the lines, with paths for pilgrims on foot and plant trees for shade and fruit trees, so that the soil should not altogether be waste. Then I would like to send every man, woman and child in Western Europe on a pilgrimage along that Via Sacra so that they might think and learn what war means from the silent witnesses on either side.” A respected writer on contemporary history and politics, Seldon had lost his wife, his job and his home in recent years; his plan to walk the whole route was therefore not only to publicise the project but also to help him find peace and a sense of direction. So this is a very person book, in which the reader learns much about the author’s mental health – and also about his blisters!

Fighting, as we know, ceased with the armistice at 11am on 11 November 1918… Work began almost at once on a peace treaty, requiring the armistice to be extended three times. Representatives of thirty-two nations met in Paris from January 1919, though the proceedings were dominated by just three: France, Britain and the United States. The Treaty of Versailles, which dealt with Germany, was signed on 28 June 1919, five years to the day after the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo. The final of five peace treaties – Lausanne, focusing on the Ottoman Empire – was not signed until July 2023. The Path of Peace, Walking the Western Front Way tells the story of Seldon’s epic 38-day hike, from one end to the other, along the line over which the opposing armies fought for those four long years over one hundred years ago. And yet, for many, and as Seldon reminds us, the First World War remains in living memory. Those of us who are old enough to be grandparents ourselves knew our grandparents who had been young men and women at the time. Sir Anthony will mark Armistice Day at a service and a ceremony at the Cenotaph, and, on Remembrance Sunday, he will be at church in Windsor, as usual.

The book comprises many themes: there is the walk itself, the war, the unknown warriors in need of a champion, the charity too needing a champion, and the author’s own thirst for a drink and medical attention for his blisters. And swirling through this mix is the grief which Seldon feels after the loss of his wife. So much for “the war to end wars” as, following the title of a 1914 H.G. Wells book, the First World War came to be known. “Peace”, at least at a national level, held in Europe for twenty years after the armistice before forces, unleashed by the war and its aftermath, propelled the world into an even greater conflagration after September 1939. Before 1914, Europe’s great powers had been at peace, mostly, for a hundred years since the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 had brought the last great continental war to an end. Is peace, then, merely the absence of war? Or is it something altogether deeper?’ Seldon 2022, 22-23 This is the world’s biggest commemorative project,” he says. There is interest in Germany, and he would love to see if it is possible to extend the route from Canterbury Cathedral to Freiburg. “That would be an extension to join two of the greatest Christian centres in Northern Europe.” The route of his 1,000 kilometre journey was inspired by a young British soldier of the First World War, Alexander Douglas Gillespie, who dreamed of creating a ‘Via Sacra’ that the men, women and children of Europe could walk to honour the fallen. Tragically, Gillespie was killed in action, his vision forgotten for a hundred years, until a chance discovery in the archive of one of England’s oldest schools galvanised Anthony into seeing the Via Sacra permanently established.The family eked out a living converting the downstairs room into a haberdashery shop despite the family business suffering from periodic burglaries; but they felt safe at last from mortal danger. There is much to admire in this account of his journey. Seldon gives us vivid descriptions of his aches and pains, blisters, moments of despondency and emergency visits to French hospitals, while making clear that they were as nothing compared with what the soldiers once went through. He has a historian’s enthusiasm and sharp eye for spotting and recounting good stories, many from the particular battlefields he is passing by. It is impossible not to be moved by a chaplain’s description of the last moments of a 19-year-old who had been court-martialled and sentenced to be shot: “I held his arm tight to reassure him and then he turned his blindfolded face to mine and said in a voice which wrung my heart, ‘Kiss me, sir, kiss me’, and with my kiss on his lips, and ‘God has you in his keeping’ whispered in his ear, he passed on into the Great Unseen.” Robert Graves, meanwhile, recalled an officer yelling at the men in his trench that they were “bloody cowards”, only for his sergeant to tell him: “Not cowards, sir. Willing enough. But they are all f-ing dead.” The book also includes some interesting wider reflections on Great War brothels, dentistry, dysentery, footwear, homosexuality and unexploded munitions – and whether “first-hand experience of war make[s] for better and wiser [political] leaders”. A timely, eloquent and convincing reminder that to forget the carnage of the past is to open the door to it happening again.' George Alagiah England has been all she could be to Jews, Jews will be all they can be to England”, stated the Jewish Chronicle on the outbreak of war in 1914.

The Western Front Way is a free walking and cycling route along the WWI Western Front. It stretches over 1000km, from Switzerland to the Belgian coast. You might also enjoy ‘ Sierra Leone Peace and Cultural Monument‘, ‘ Padre Steve’s Christmas Journey of Healing‘, ‘ Peace Through Movement‘ and ‘ Care for Nature‘.Others must have walked this route before, perhaps even in its entirety. It is also one of those once-in-a-lifetime trips that thousands of people must have contemplated. But those wishing to follow the route that Seldon took cannot use this book as a map. Not that you will need to have a map, hopefully – but more on that later. Seldon was also wedded to a strict schedule that could not be altered. Rest days and sightseeing were lost in a blizzard of injuries, dehydration, and no little amount of map work – though some of the steeper hills, Seldon notes, have become less punishing over time due to the effects of shell-fire. Seldon first read Gillespie’s letter in 2012. As he put it, ‘with interest in the Great War surging as the centenary approached, I sensed something substantial and potent. Had the time now come to revive the proposal, to make it a reality?’ (Seldon 2022, 7) With the support of some of Gillespie’s great-nieces and great-nephews, among other significant collaborators, Seldon formed a charity called the Western Front Way, which has successfully established a 1000km trail (with a route for bikes as well as for walkers) that echoes the line of No Man’s Land along the Western Front. This route ( described as‘the biggest single commemorative project underway on the globe’) functions as both a memorial and a learning experience, with an app offering historical context en route. There’s something about doing things deliberately, and intentionally finding things which are going to be challenging at the end of your life, and taking them on.” Too young for the orphanage, he was fostered by one Jewish couple after another, until eventually adopted by Marks and Eva Slobodian, Russian émigrés who may or may not have known his parents. The project, motivated by his wholehearted engagement with an idea that had emerged for an international path of peace, reaching from the Belgian Coast, through France, down to the old Franco-German-Swiss boundary, came from his discovery, ten years earlier, of the letters of a Second Lieutenant in the Argyll and Southern Highlanders who had perished in September 1915 at Loos. “I wish that when peace comes, our government might combine with the French government to make one long Avenue between the lines from the Vosges to the sea” where “silent witnesses” on either side would inform pilgrims, “every man [woman] and child in Western Europe” about “what war means”. Seldon, intrigued, found and enlisted the support of Douglas Gillespie’s descendants, and, with others, set up a charity to see through this vision. The Western Front Way is now a recognized long-distance path.

Anthony Seldon is no disinterested writer. Convinced that Douglas Gillespie’s dream was “the best idea that emerged from the war”, he set up a charity to create the Western Front Way – no simple task given that very little of the lines of the trenches remain and that much of the countryside destroyed by wars is now grassed over, planted with trees, or restored to working farmland. This book is his account of his own journey on foot along the route of the Western Front Way, from Vosges Mountains (Kilometer Zero) to the Channel, a total of 1,000 kilometers which he accomplished in 35 days in August/September 2021. A deeply informed meditation on the First World War, an exploration of walking's healing power, a formidable physical achievement... and above all a moving enactment of a modern pilgrimage.' Rory StewartIn what ways has Seldon’s book or Gillespie’s dream changed how you think about peace and peace-building? Seldon had led battlefield visits to Flanders as a teacher for decades. As a historian, he was almost duty bound to do so. He was also drawn to the history of the First World War, using literature and performance productions as a way of transmitting the message. Here, something else comes into play. He was retired, recently widowed, and looking for a purpose to his new life. The travelogue is therefore both a historical account of the battles that took place in the villages he traverses, an account of his hike, and an interior monologue about his own search for peace. Tracing the historic route of the Western Front, he traversed some of Europe’s most beautiful and evocative scenery, from the Vosges, Argonne and Champagne to the haunting trenches of Arras, the Somme and Ypres. Along the way, he wrestled heat exhaustion, dog bites and blisters as well as a deeper search for inner peace and renewed purpose. Touching on grief, loss and the legacy of war, The Path of Peace is the extraordinary story of Anthony’s epic walk, an unforgettable act of remembrance and a triumphant rediscovery of what matters most in life.