The unity of Rig Business certainly degraded Grant Hall as it has never been degraded before. It was abysmal. Cleverly covered up, the subject really was: “We have the money and if you university professors don’t do and say what we want, out you get.”
On a cold winter day in February 1938, Principal Wallace calls George into his office at Queen’s and says, “I’m putting your name forward for a Rhodes Scholarship. I think you have a good chance of being awarded one next year.”
George doesn’t know what to say.
“You do know that it won’t be given to you just because you’re George Parkin Grant. There are other strong candidates in the class of ’39. You’ll have to work to win it.”
George sets to work with great discipline. When he writes his mother to tell her about it, he says,
An excellent system of work has been devised… Getting up at seven in the morning & eating my breakfast till eight then working till nine then lectures. I go to bed strictly at eleven o’clock. The trouble is that when one goes to bed one is so tired that one drops exhausted to the pillow only to get up the next day and do exactly the same thing.
The hard work and discipline pay off almost immediately. He wins two scholarships for his final year at Queen’s which allow him to take the summer off and travel in England and Europe. He works his way to England on a cattle boat then stays with Mrs. Buck at her country estate. He visits with the Masseys in London and then spends some time cycling in England with a friend. With his sister Alison and his cousin Hart Massey, he visits Italy by automobile. In Milan, George writes home:
I have been slow writing, but there has been so much to do and it has all been perfect. I have never seen such wonderful things and, above all, you must not miss Chartres. Paris, however wonderful, must be given up for a bit to see Chartres, as it is the most wonderful man-made thing I have ever seen, even after Geneva (marvellous), Switzerland & the mountains, the lakes and Milan. I think I loved Chartres best. Even rushing through France I realised that it was far in a way not a foreign country but home.
From Milan they go to Padua, Venice, Verona, and Florence then to Assisi, Capri, Naples, Pompeii, Rome.
Back in Kingston for his third year, George works hard for the Rhodes Scholarship. In letters of support from his teachers, he’s praised for his ‘quick active mind and powers of penetration and comprehension above the average’ by Professor Trotter. Professor Corry singles out ‘the important quality of intellectual daring.’ Nicholas Ignatieff, who had taught him history at UCC, writes that George gives ‘every indication of possessing a first class mind – fearless, original and prodding’ and exhibits ‘a strong but sensitive character very much concerned with justice and right.’ All comment on his emotional immaturity. After he wins the Rhodes scholarship, there are those who think he got it through family connections because he’s neither as well-rounded nor as competitive an athlete as Rhodes Scholars are expected to be in order to better become great leaders.
Toward the end of his final year, war looks more and more inevitable. It’s on everybody’s mind. George wonders how he should respond if it breaks out. Is his pacifism deeply enough rooted to withstand the frenzy of the warmongers? It’s something he talks about with his friends and thinks about late at night.
George paces his room unable to apply himself to his studies. His mind races this way and that. He remembers what his friends have said to him. And what he has said to them. It’s a jumble of competing voices. When he can no longer hear himself think clearly because there’s been too much talk all day, too much to sort out, he starts a letter to his mother. He writes some words about the dominance of evil in the world, gets up, paces some more, sits back down, writes what is closest to his heart,
If one is a Christian one must be forced back without doubt that one can never fight. Force cannot vie with force. Christ could have called on the angels to tear the temporal power of Jerusalem into ten billion fragments but he didn’t because he realized by passive resistance he won in the long run because he realized that if he let tyranny, stupidity & foolishness be destroyed they would crop up again. But as he made the permanent protest of nonresistance in the end he would create a far greater victory in his example; of course the world has not accepted the example but it still stands unflinching. Therefore if one is a Christian one cannot fight. Of course if one isn’t there is no reason in the world why one shouldn’t fight.
The question no one can answer for him is how much of a Christian is he, really?
All hell breaks loose. Two planes crash. One comes down in the field next to the woods where George has been cutting logs with some companions. They run to the field but before they get there, a German parachutist comes down fast only a hundred metres away. The woodcutters duck behind trees and wait. There’s no movement under the chute after it touches down. They investigate. The German is dead – his face intact, his body smashed. They move toward the plane with their axes. It’s an English one. They look inside and see the pilot all burned up. They smell burned flesh, feel the heat, and see flickers of flame. The plane is still on fire, still dangerous. They back away. Quickly. The ammunition boxes ignite. Bullets rip the air. They dive for cover. This is George’s first direct encounter with war. It is August 1940.
George Grant, October 1941. “I am not my own.”
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