We may call it Remembrance Day, but the true name of November 11 is Armistice Day. It commemorates the signing of the armistice between the Allied nations and Germany in 1918 that led to the end of the Great War. So, what we are celebrating today is not about war. It is about peace.
And while we mourn the dead of the many wars since that ‘War to end all War’ as it was called, we should try to imagine what that date meant to people in 1918. It was a day of hope. Hope that the long, terrible, unnecessary destruction of young men would stop. That life would return to some semblance of normality. Where fathers and sons, brothers and sisters could come home to their families at the end of each day.
But, as we know, the Great War was not to be the war to end all wars. Between 1939 and 1945, it was referred to as ‘the last war’. And when that second great world war ended in 1945, the ‘Great War’ became ‘World War I’, pushed into the past by the new horrific memories of World War II.
But those are just the big wars that cast their shadow over the whole world. There have been numerous other wars, and many continue to simmer away as civil conflicts. We are no closer to world peace than we were on November 11, 1918. So, while we remember and honour our own fallen, spare a thought for all the other victims of war.
Lynne Cairns 