A Day To Remember

     No, this won’t be about the sinking of the Titanic.

     The British call it Remembrance Day, and commemorate it with red poppy badges on the left of the chest. Americans call it Veterans’ Day, recite John McCrae’s poem to one another, and that’s about it. But it was originally called Armistice Day, in recognition of what really happened.

     On November 11, 1918 at 11:00 AM, in a railroad car on a siding in Compiègne, France, the representatives of the Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente met to conclude what would be known for many years as “The Great War.” The name was not chosen by any nation’s officialdom, but by the common parlance of the nations of Europe. It was well chosen, though that murderous conflict would be renamed after its 1939-to-1945 rematch.

     About ten million men, mostly very young as soldiers often are, died in the carnage of World War I. The event shattered Europe’s century of peace and the psyches of its peoples. The slaughter left many families without heirs. No social class was spared. That’s part of the backstory of the popular movie Kingsman.

     Today, no one who fought in World War I still lives. All we have is the memory of them… and that too has faded.

     What made Armistice Day important wasn’t the armistice itself, nor the Versailles Treaty that would follow soon afterward. It was the admission by the leaders of the German Empire that it was about to die – that its forces and resources had been exhausted and that, absent an immediate conclusion, Germany itself would cease to exist. Kaiser Wilhelm II, formerly a monarch of near-absolute power, was effectively dethroned by Germany’s defeat.

     National potentates have seldom experienced a humiliation as complete as that visited upon the rulers of the Triple Alliance nations. It was a message to the warlords of the world. At least, it ought to have been. But only twenty years later, there came a still greater war. It was as if the whole tragedy had been forgotten.

     In some sense, the World Wars have eventuated in a kind of peace. Wars since 1945 have nearly all been local. They’ve seldom involved more than two or three nations. The exceptions have been few. The conflicts themselves have mostly ended swiftly.

     Many writers on warfare and mass conflict have written that the emergence of weapons of mass destruction have made war “unthinkable.” Sadly, that’s not the case. Mankind’s inclination toward warfare remains unquenched. We arm, and arm, and arm. We posture, and threaten, and flex. And we keep killing, though the reasons have changed much since the Great War.

     While the First World nations have nearly all retreated from capital punishment, even for the most heinous crimes, the slaughter of thousands remains something for which we continue to arm, train, and spend. We have become too delicate to kill by retail, but we remain ever ready to do so wholesale. It suggests a cleavage in the human mind, a barrier that prevents the conscious engagement of our moral and ethical natures with the greatest of the horrors we’ve known.

     But it seems I’ve been using the wrong pronoun. Haven’t I, Gentle Reader?

     “We” don’t want war. Even career soldiers, men who’ve made warfare their profession, mostly shun the grisly business. But plainly, someone wants wars, or they wouldn’t happen.

     In the years before the Treaties of Westphalia, wars tended to be small and local. Most were a matter of one nobleman warring with another. The reasons for them would strike most of our contemporaries as absurd. Some historians have written that a common reason for nobles’ wars was entertainment – boredom. It is reputed that when someone asked Frederick II Hohenzollern of Prussia why he’d gone to war with Austria over the province of Silesia, he replied, “I had a big army, a full treasury, and I wanted to see my name in the newspapers.” It seems that for Frederick, acquiring Silesia for Prussia was a secondary consideration.

     Those who want wars tend to seek power.

     It should be clear, really. War means mass death and destruction. To inflict death on another person is the ultimate expression of power. Consider the infliction of mass death and destruction on a whole people. What could give the power-luster a bigger thrill than that?

     But these days, the power-lusters don’t participate. They send others to do the killing and destroying. They watch the action long-distance, the longest distance they can contrive. That’s even true of four-star generals and admirals. Might get the uniform dirty, otherwise.

     Sensible people avoid violence when possible. Even power-lusters are that sensible. But that doesn’t keep them from sending men to war.

     As I noted above, many writers have opined that the development of nuclear weapons has at long last evoked a sense of fragility in Mankind – that we could look forward to an era of enduring peace. While the point is arguable, the development and proliferation of nukes hasn’t extinguished human bellicosity. Nations no longer go to war for entertainment, but that’s about the best anyone can say for their propensity to engage in mass conflict.

     When the Treaties of Westphalia put an end to the nobles’ wars and gave a firm foundation to sovereignty and the nation-state, warfare became the province of national governments. It sometimes doesn’t seem that way, what with “non-state actors” sticking their drippy noses into such things here and there. At least we can say that big wars remain the province of national governments.

     Is there a better reason to condemn the State? I can’t think of one. Never mind politicians’ propensity to declare that a war must be fought “to make the world safe for democracy,” or because we’ve reached a “rendezvous with destiny,” or similar nonsense. PolSpeak embraces warfare quite as readily as taxation.

     The passing years will bring more, larger, and better engines of destruction. Governments will grow able to slaughter and destroy with ever greater range, efficacy, and efficiency. If history is a reliable guide, national armies and arsenals will be used. More men will die. More graves will fill with the remains of young men sent forth to kill and die by politicians who remain comfortably at home.

     How does the future look to you, Gentle Reader? With ever more regimes exhibiting ever greater rapacity? With ever more regimes acquiring advanced weaponry, including weapons of mass destruction? With such regimes frequently expressing belligerence toward their neighbors, whether by word or by deed?

     It’s just a pre-Armistice Day thought from a starry-eyed idealist who loves life, peace, and freedom, but still: Wouldn’t you say it’s time to stop this silly business before we get ourselves killed?