Remembrance Day

 

Today is Remembrance Day. 

It was instituted first, of course, to remember those who died in the First World War.

Since then it has become fashionable to consider their sacrifice pointless. The First World War was all a blunder, a folly. The Great Powers sleepwalked into it. It achieved nothing but the exhaustion of Western civilization, and a bigger war twenty years later.

Some will say that of all war; their only issue is that we must never resort to violence. Some will wear white poppies today, implicitly condemning the choice of those we remember to volunteer and risk their lives. Some will wear purple poppies tomorrow, suggesting that, while their deaths are lamentable, they were no better than dumb animals.

This seems to me an appalling lack of respect or empathy for millions of young men whose lives were cut short.

It is true of course that all war is terrible. It is always mass murder. It is true that the world would be better off today had the First World War never happened. 

That is not to say it was of no consequence, or there was nothing worth fighting for.

Germany in 1914 was already imbued with a racialist, nationalist, modernist and anti-Christian philosophy that later became more fully expressed as Nazism. Austria-Hungary was trying to annex a small neighbour. Germany was in violation of treaty and of international law in invading Belgium. There was, as almost always, a right side, and a wrong side. This is why we have wars; otherwise everything could indeed be settled by negotiation.

Take up our quarrel with the foe
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high
If ye break faith with those who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Wear the poppy.