Doing Your Duty
We live in a time when personal rights are stressed rather than personal responsibility. The crowds cry for personal benefits and happiness not personal obligation. Acting responsibly and doing your duty are not contemporary virtues.
The word “duty” has all but disappeared from ordinary speech, while “obligation” and “responsibility” are usually seen as unpleasant medicines that, sometimes, one must take. Professor William J. Stuntz of Harvard Law School says: “The Bible teaches that while happiness may not be your lot in this life, you can have something much better: contentment, even joy. Want a satisfying life? Live up to your obligations — or, as generations past would have put it more elegantly, do your duty.”
I am continually impressed by people who do their duty. I think of a single woman who has devoted half of her life to caring for two fail parents. Her personal life, outings and enjoyment have been on hold for years. I know an older man who daily supports his wife who is suffering from Alzheimer’s. I know a teenage son who fits school and homework around being the primary carer for his mother who suffers from Bi-polar disorder. And how many mothers accept without complaint their responsibility for their child who is physically or mentally disabled. They would all dismiss any praise with the phrase; they were simply doing their duty.
This virtue needs to be rediscovered by more of us. Recently after attending a black tie dinner with Queen Elizabeth II, I was reflecting of what one phrase could describe her 54 year reign and her 80 years of public service. I decided it was “she has done her duty.”
Princess Elizabeth and her sister Margaret were taught as children they must always do their duty. They heard the heroic tale of Lord Nelson who saved England from conquest at Trafalgar in 1805. They remembered his signal to the sailors of all ships of the line, “England expects every man to do his duty.”
Then there was that dreadful day when Elizabeth learned, when she was ten years of age, that her “Uncle David,” King Edward VIII, was not going to do his duty but was to give up the Throne in 1936 for the woman he loved.
She venerated her father, a shy man with a stutter who was thrust into kingship by the abdication but who mastered his task through hard work. She saw him, despite the hardship, doing his duty. During her wartime adolescence, the idea of obedience and doing one’s duty for the greater good was the norm. The family decided to stay in Buckingham Palace despite the blitz which bombed their home. When she was twenty one, I remember her speaking on radio, “my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service.”
That was her statement of dutiful intent. Now at 80 years she has not changed her core old-fashioned value. Holding her, and the British Monarchy, has been this intense sense of doing her duty.
Doing her duty has held her family together. Ten years ago, the young royals were behaving like they were soapie stars. Sons, daughters in law, grandchildren, were behaving in such a manner that the common people had enough, and republicanism, raised its head.
But today Elizabeth enjoys the balmy days of her 54-year reign. The tabloid fodder of Charles and Diana, Andrew and Fergie, the death of her beloved mother at 101, and the sight of her grandchildren, some sporting studs and living with partners are all behind her. Charles is at long last married to Camilla, and Princes William and Harry are graduating as Officers in the British Army.
She has become a matriarch in autumn, presiding over “a family happy once again, the more credible for the traumas they have been through” (TIME Magazine).
Doing her duty has kept the Commonwealth together. Empires rise and fall and the unravelling of the British Empire at the end of World War II was expected. But instead the Queen has held it together. Today’s Commonwealth is an association of 53 countries with 1.8 billion citizens, about 30 per cent of the world’s population, drawn from the broadest range of faiths, races, cultures and traditions. It is the most diverse organization, held together by tradition, culture, language, economic co-operation, sporting competitions and at the centre of it all is Queen Elizabeth. She had done her duty to all of the former colonies of Great Britain. Since 1952, she has received more than 3 million letters, hosted around 1.1 million guests at her garden parties, and made an incredible 256 official overseas visits to 129 countries including 15 to Australia.
She has kept the United Kingdom together. In every generation there have been movements for self government among the Irish, the Scots, and the Welsh. Today they have their own Parliaments and elected representatives. Twenty years ago the wagging tongues of journalists were predicting the dissolving of the United Kingdom and the end of monarchy. Republicanism was inevitable within ten years. Yet the most recent British poll indicated that only 19% of the British people would like to switch to a republic—one more percentage point than in 1969. Even after a decade of tumult for the Windsor’s, 68% of Britons wanted to retain them. “That’s astonishing,” says Sunder Katwala, head of the Fabian Society, a think tank affiliated with the Labor Party. “It represents an absolute failure for British republicanism,” there’s no real debate at all on the future of the monarchy in Britain.
Every Tuesday night, the British Prime Minister, all ten of them since Sir Winston Churchill, reports to her on all matters of state. They report that she is one of the most intelligent political advisers and one of the most knowledgeable. Listening to so many lame political excuses over fifty years would make anyone weary, but she does her duty, and the United Kingdom is stable and prosperous.
Just a few years ago, few would have predicted such an outcome. That republicanism has no political traction is due largely to the Queen. Asked to explain his mother’s relationship with the country, Prince Andrew says: “I would put her appeal down to consistency. In their eyes, she’s never let them down.” She has steadfastly done her duty.
The constant round of meeting with people of different cultures and languages, speaking with countless thousands of people every year can be very wearying. Over the years I have had the privilege of attending many receptions for the Royal Party and of speaking with the Queen and Prince Philip. I notice she does not give attention to those who push to the front.
On a couple of occasions, her eyes caught onto my small, round badge of the Order of Australia and she commented, “I see you are a member of my order. What did you do to deserve that?” Upon telling her, she started into a discussion of social conditions for the under privileged in Australia, and compared them with her recent visits to places and events in Great Britain where she had visited centres for the homeless and the like. She quoted recent statistics, and told me about a number of innovative programs. She knew the situation well and asked what was happening here. There was nothing artificial or contrived. She wanted to know.
On another occasion, I said grace before a dinner at which they were present. After grace, Prince Philip got up and came to me to ask if I knew Lord Soper has just died. I did know, and mentioned I had visited him recently. That led into a very long retelling of his association with Donald Soper. He mentioned Soper’s social justice stands and asked what was happening on those issues in Australia. He knew his facts, and was genuinely interested in our situation. He asked for further detailed information.
Those couple of occasions taught me to listen to people even if I have just met them for the first time. The Royals have developed the art of really listening and putting the other person at ease. That is a magnificent quality and rarely seen in people who are just doing their duty.
TIME Magazine recently asked: “What can a constitutional monarch like Elizabeth II, prohibited from exercising any real power, actually do to justify her country’s steady devotion—the crowds who line up to cheer when she passes, her face on each coin and bill and postage stamp, a national anthem that beseeches God to save her? What does she really do to earn something for which respect is way too small a word?
Prince Andrew explains: “People say to me, ‘Your life must be very strange.’ But of course I’ve not experienced any other life. It’s not strange to me. The same way with the Queen. She has never experienced anything else. That life, that knowledge, that wisdom is purely natural to her.”
Duty is its own reward: “She is very religious, but she is also philosophical. She feels she must do the job she has been given and that it will be for others to judge whether she has succeeded.”
She did not ask for the duties that fell to her, but she has done them, conscientiously, and she will keep doing them for as many days as she is given. As a girl she learnt from Micah 6:8 “And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”
Queen Elizabeth II has done that. She is certainly the person of the century. We honour her. She has done her duty.
GORDON MOYES
