Honoring the Armistice

One hundred years ago today, at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day on the eleventh month, the world heard something it hadn’t heard in over four years: silence.

It was the Armistice. The War to End All Wars was finally over. The world knew it had changed, but how much so wasn’t readily apparent. Before the year was over, the ancient Hapsburg and Romanov dynasties would be consigned to the scrap heap of history. The lack of strong central government and the economic blight imposed by the Treaty of Versailles would soon be the causes of another, even more terrible war.

But on this day, at this hour, people truly believed that never again would great powers wage war on one another. The carnage of the one just ended was unlike anything ever seen. Millions of men, some bold, most scared, all of them heroic, had breathed their last in the mud and vermin filled trenches of Europe. Millions more were made infirm, the loss of limb, eyes or even lungs a permanent reminder of their service.

But November 11, 1918 seemed to be the end of all that. It harkened of a new era, one of peace, one in which young men of every nationality would never again need to worry about fighting against terrible odds on a battlefield far from their homes.

We haven’t lived up to that ideal over these first hundred years since the first Armistice Day. Maybe I’m being naive, but shouldn’t we rededicate ourselves to that purpose over the next 100?

Because, quite frankly the world doesn’t need any more of these.