The thief who’s not the least bit sorry he stole

But is terribly, terribly sorry he’s going to jail

A Sunday sermon

In one of the many confrontations between Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara in the 1939 blockbuster Gone With The Wind, in which Butler invariably has an incisive truth to tell to O’Hara, which O’Hara knows is truth but refuses to appreciate for want of an ability to set her own driving interests behind anyone else’s, Captain Butler tells the weeping woman:

“You’re like the thief who isn’t the least bit sorry he stole but is terribly, terribly sorry he’s going to jail.”

I think that that probably sums up the Confederacy when it lost the American Civil War.

Image: Clark Gable, as Captain Rhett Butler, and Vivien Leigh, as Scarlett O’Hara, in the 1939 film Gone With The Wind.

I take it, dear reader, that, like me, you have never been to jail for anything you stole. But, did you ever, like me, steal something without going to jail for it? And, if you were caught, did you express how terribly, terribly sorry you were? You mean to say, you never stole? You never, ever came into possession of something knowing it was not your property and failed to render it up to its rightful owner or to the police for return to its rightful owner? Compliments to you, then.

Atonement is the technical word for making amends, for saying you’re sorry. Just after Christmas, I was at work at the shop where I work (as one is), and happened to see a colleague who had been very kind in the few days before the festive season by making a gingerbread village, with powdered sugar for snow and little gingerbread houses and chocolate stars: really, a very pretty scene, and all edible. He’d laid it out in the staff room for his colleagues to partake. It was scrumptious.

By the time I saw my colleague again, it was past the Christmas period, but I expressed my thanks for this kindness. He’s quite a masculine type, and perhaps my thanks made him feel uncomfortable: it wasn’t intended, but I couldn’t let him labour under any impression that his work had gone unappreciated. “Oh, it’s nothing, it’s very easy, really,” he replied. I don’t think it was easy but maybe he is an accomplished pâtissier.

His reply called to mind a situation 20 years ago when someone had complimented me on something I was wearing in the presence of another friend, and I had replied, “Oh, this old thing!” The other friend turned to me and said, “Just accept the compliment for how it was intended.” So, if the moral here is that compliments should be accepted for the sincerity with which they are expressed, what about apologies?

Apologies are interesting because there is a moral impulsion to extend them (as opposed to compliments), and also a moral impulsion to accept them. But are they not simply wallpaper over a crack in the wall?

A friend of mine got into an altercation with a cyclist whilst out in her car a while back, the cyclist contending that she had blocked his path. The argument caused voices to be raised, such that the driver of the vehicle that had by now pulled up behind my friend got out and approached to see what the trouble was. At that, the cyclist used a foul slur of an invective against my friend, and the other motorist intervened to say, “I think you owe this lady an apology.”

I think he did as well and the second motorist’s intervention may well have brought the cyclist to a realisation that he was unnecessarily overheating a situation in which no harm had in fact occurred to any party. I suppose the apology was given, but that raises a question about apologies, say, for genocides (like from Germany for the massacres of Herero tribespeople in German South-West Africa), for gross dereliction of duty (like by South Yorkshire police for the Battle of Orgreave), for involvement in the slave trade (like by The Guardian, when that publication discovered its founder had been involved with slaves). How sincere is an apology that needs to be asked for? As opposed to one that is offered voluntarily (like The Guardian’s was)?

Horologists know that a mechanical clock that runs fast or slow, or unevenly, can be made to run on time, or evenly, by moving the hands once a week or propping the clock up on one side so that the tick equals the tock. But few purist horologists will resort to such measures. For a clock that is running fast or slow, the answer is to extend or reduce the length of the pendulum or tighten the main spring, and propping the clock up at one side is not quite so good as adjusting the transverse beam from which the pendulum is hung. In other words, you can demand an apology and it may yet even be given so that everything appears as if everyone is atoned, but the root cause of the slow or uneven running has not truly been addressed.

The etymology of atonement is bizarrely simple: it is the state of being at one. In a religious, as in a secular, sense, being at one is existence in a state of unity, and unity cannot be achieved through pretence. It must be genuine in order to work, and it must be eternal in its functioning. An apology means the wrongdoer has revisited his act and shown remorse, and expressed a desire never to commit the error again. He may do so unwittingly, for to err is human. But never again should he be inclined to commit the fault a second time through his conscious will. The thief, as referred to by Clark Gable in that film, must not just be sorry he is going to jail, but must be sorry for having stolen in the first place.

So much, then, for clocks, and for apologies and compliments. What about when an apology or compliment is given not by an individual, however, but by an institution? By a country? How, then, do we measure genuineness, or sincerity? What is the sincerity of a country? Or of a commercial enterprise? How can we be sure of their values? Is the prime value of a company not to extract maximum profit and, if that is so, how, then, should we regard such subsidiary values as it might proclaim to all and sundry?

The recent frantic backtracking by corporate entities in terms of their diversity policies, with regard to combating discrimination on grounds of race, sexual orientation, disability and such like, resembled the fawning obsequiousness of courtiers kowtowing to some king.

The sincerity of a country, or a company, cannot even be measured in terms of how its people vote (be they an electorate or body of shareholders). Governments, like board members, come and go, and, like Mr Jenrick, they even cross the floor of the House halfway through a parliament. In short, when Joseph McCarthy formerly said, and when American politicians today say, that such-and-such behaviour is un-American, they leave the listener somewhat unfazed, for pinpointing what, exactly, being American is, is no easy task.

Being American is to be entrepreneurial, exploitative, expansionist, abolitionist, demure, brazen, defensive, aggressive, libertarian, repressive, fair, mean, murderous, life-preserving, valiant, cowardly. To contend that an act is un-American is to contend that no American would ever do such a thing, and Americans, just like people the world over, have committed all manner of acts, such that there is hardly anything they might do that would be new under the sun. So, if America, or any other country for that matter, extends an apology, what is that worth? Can one man even speak for however many people live in America? Can he encapsulate America’s values? Supporters of Mr Trump will say that what his administration is doing right now is exactly that: encapsulating America’s values. And his opponents will be saying that, once Mr Trump has been ousted from the White House, America’s un-American values will recede and its American values will once again come to the fore. Hm.

In 2020, The Guardian newspaper produced a very moving film (about which I wrote an article) about a Frenchwoman—actually about two Frenchwomen. One was a very young woman working as a research librarian compiling a definitive reference work on the French Resistance. The other had been a member of the Resistance; the film was named after her: Colette.

In the course of the documentary, we meet Colette Marin-Catherine, whose brother was taken by the Nazis to a forced labour camp at Nordhausen in Germany to make V2 missiles, where within months he was worked to death. The film is about Colette coming to terms with the barbarous manner in which the brother she loved was taken from her. She visits Mittelbau-Dora Konzentrationslager to honour her brother’s memory. It is the first time she has ever been to Germany. Mittelbau-Dora is today preserved as what is known in German as a Mahnmal: a memorial that does more than commemorate, but that issues a warning to all-comers—never to repeat what happened in that terrible place.

Upon her arrival in Nordhausen, Colette is informed that the city’s ex-mayor would like to meet with her to express sympathy for how her brother was treated. She agrees to receive him in a restaurant in the town. He gives, in German, a prepared speech which is translated into French by an interpreter. Half-way through, Colette interrupts him and asks him to stop. He tells the interpreter that, if she could just hang on, he’s almost finished: his spontaneous apology takes on the character of a scheduled intervention. Colette stiffens, her voice becomes clipped and insistent: she cannot bear to hear any more of his drivel.

The viewer is left in a quandary: Colette is not prepared to accept the apologies of a man who was only a kiddie at the time her brother perished. Is that reasonable, or is it unreasonable? Can a new generation not atone for the sins of its forefathers? Can bygones not simply be bygones?

The film was made in 2020 and won a prize for The Guardian in 2022. It was very highly acclaimed. Colette is still living in France today. She has not changed, not since those days of the war. The same, however, cannot be said of the German people. Or can it?

Germans went to the polls in 2024 to elect new state parliaments, including in Nordhausen, which is in Thuringia, where Colette’s brother died. The people of Nordhausen elected as their member of parliament Ms Kerstin Düben-Schaumann, to represent them and their interests. Ms Düben-Schaumann is a member of the party known as Alternative für Deutschland. So, maybe I can repeat the question: can a new generation of Germans atone for the sins of their forefathers?

I know only one thing: that I can only atone for my own sins. And who I am thereby at one with as a result of that is a matter for me. Me and my God.