The cool days of November are upon us. Since I was a lad, this time of the year always causes me to think of the echoing pronouncement, "It was on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month that the guns went silent." In the Commonwealth nations, this is often rendered Armistice or Remembrance Day. In America, it is commonly called Veterans Day. This is the day the guns went silent on the Western Front of what was then known as the "Great War."
Amazingly, it has been 89 years since our grandfathers and great-grandfathers fought on the plains of Europe. It wasn't supposed to be a great war. It simply wasn't supposed to last long. But the complicated quilt of alliances that reacted to the assassination of the archduke of Austria at Sarajevo would have it no other way.
Surely, the wise men could have stopped it. Or certainly the cousins who occupied the thrones of England, Germany and Russia could have handled this in a backroom family way.
But, well, the rest is history. Perhaps the various politicians and nations had to get the tensions that had been building for decades out of their system. And, as is so often the way with war, the troops were still fighting in the accustomed manner of the last century's conflicts and were not prepared for the latest technological advances. Charging horses were no match for newly devised automatic weaponry, and the big guns of war would do their job.
The dead deserved a reason for dying
As the "Great War" unfolded, many sought a great vision and hope around which humanity might rally. Certainly the dead deserved a reason for dying. Thus, this global eruption would be framed as "The War to End All Wars." Certainly a better world would emerge! It simply had to be. The societal evolution of man, so popularly envisioned at the time, demanded nothing less.
