Editorial: Armistice Day
For the third time, we are celebrating Armistice Day in the midst of a war which has so altered the occasion’s spirit and significance that there is some reason to doubt that Nov. 11 will have a permanent place among our national holidays.
For 20 years we observed Nov. 11 as the anniversary of that historic occasion when the “war to end war” was itself brought to an end. But for the past five years, such an observance would have been a mockery of the facts. Rather, it has become a rebuke to the world of statesmen who, confronted repeatedly by threats to the brave slogan of “war to end war,” did not raise their hands to stay those threats.
But the altered circumstances have not lessened the honor paid to the men who died believing that slogan. Since the beginning of history, men have honored soldiers who died in battle for a cause they thought just. But for the soldiers of 1917-18, the cause had a nobility and grandeur that surpassed all others.
Today, some may look back to the slogans of “war to end war” and a world “safe for democracy" with the same cynicism that many statesmen must have felt about them at the time. But many, perhaps most, of the American doughboys believed them. If they had to die in battle, it was in the belief that no son or grandson of theirs, or any man anywhere, would have to do it again. And the same belief sustained and solaced the families of these doughboys.
Now another generation of American soldiers is fighting and dying. Maybe the thoughts of this generation are less idealistic. But the peace for which these soldiers fight may well have a better hope of permanence for that very reason.
For the world at last seems to have realized how unworthy some guardians of the peace were of the sacrifice of even one Allied soldier’s life. And when peace comes this time, it seems certain that the American people, at least, will demand a greater voice in outlining the task of keeping that peace permanent, and will assume a more careful watch of those to whom the task is entrusted.
Thus, at last, we may keep faith with the men who died in World War I and those who must die in the second to defeat the war makers and bring an end to war. When we can say that a sound, workable, wholehearted organization for world peace is established and successful we can also say that we have honored these men as fully as we can.
That day, perhaps, will not be marked on a calendar. But until it comes the obligation to speed it should be this country’s concern on Nov. 11 and every other day of the year.
