Yesterday marked eighty years since the beginning of World War II, as we tend to count it, with the invasion of Poland by the Nazi war machine. Of course there was a long prelude of aggression and conquest by Japan in Asia, answered by punishing economic sanctions from the United States, and the unanswered breaking of treaties and expansion of their control by the Germans in Europe.

There were also those in the democracies who appeased or abetted the dictators, like the America First movement or Chamberlain. But after September 1, 1939 there was no turning back. Defenders of the democratic faith, like FDR and Churchill, took the lead. In the famous poem whose title is also September 1 1939, the British poem W.H. Auden, then living in New York said,

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

He went on to speak of a culture driven mad by a psychopathic god and, in a reference to the harsh terms of the Treaty of Versailles that punished the losers of World War I, remarked that even schoolchildren know that “Those to whom evil is done/ Do evil in return.”

In the mirror, he considers the frightened “faces along the bar” who try to “cling to their average day” in order to avoid the knowledge that they are all now “Lost in a haunted wood,/Children afraid of the night/Who have never been happy or good.”

There is no consolation to be found in “The windiest militant trash/ Important Persons shout” or “the lie of Authority.” Politics and ideology have led to the present cul-de-sac where the only humane conclusion is “no one exists alone…We must love one another or die.”

And here we are eighty years on, aggressive autocratic powers seeking to expand their hegemony. Crumbling democratic alliances apparently too divided, confused, economically entangled or tempted to collaborate to adequately respond. But far off dangers can suddenly impinge on unexpected places. And harsh sanctions or the imposition of economic pain can lead to an escalation that can’t be stopped.

Beginning on this date in 1939, the lights began to go out all over Europe. Long, bloody years of darkness descended. Could it have been averted if wiser men had seen the danger and acted? Or was a world weary of war and economic trouble too divided and willing to trust that wishful thinking or watchful waiting would spare them the ordeal?

Auden concludes with more doubt than hope, seeing the grim path ahead but vowing not to despair with a metaphor that recalls Shakespeare’s comparing of a good deed to a candle whose beams shine in a weary world. At this juncture, we too must hope there are enough people of good will to protect our civilization from the ever-present appeal of barbarism on display in Syria, Moscow, Hong Kong and places far closer to home.

Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.