The Pittsburgh Press (November 11, 1940)
WAR MACHINE’S DEADLY DIN DROWNS ARMISTICE SILENCE
…
Babies of 1918 Have No Time for Tribute to Peace Today as They Fly Bombers Over Berlin and Man U-Boats Off England
…
By Joe Alex Morris, United Press Foreign News Editor
Once every year since 1918, millions in Europe paused this day to commemorate the World War Armistice.
But not today.
Every year for more than two decades, the ancient bells spoke solemnly across the countryside; the whirr of machines in factories and the creak of wagon wheels on dusty roads came to a stop.
Every year at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, entire nations prayed in sick remembrance of the millions long dead now on fields once bright with shrapnel fire.
But not today.
There was no time for ushc things today. This anniversary of the armistice that was to silence guns forever, came on the wings of war beyond the conception of the men who dropped their guns on the crimson earth 22 years ago. The eleventh hour struck today but was unheard in the dealy din. To stop even for a minute could mean the difference between victory and death.
One minute: a woman’s hands take 10 more smooth-nosed bombs from the conveyor belt at Coventry.
One minute: a sweating stevedore hurls a hundredweight of grain ashore at Liverpool and never once looks up to see the bombing planes against the sky.
One minute: a pilot dives five miles across the clouds.
22 years ago, a numbed silence settled over Europe’s battlefields and out of that silence came the cry of weary people that there should be no future war.
Today the tall, unhappy old man who had promised “peace in our time” lay dead in an England that was rocked by the blast of bombs.
In 1918, an obscure German corporal lay on a hospital bed in Pomerania and “blushed with burning shame” that the German military might had cracked and republicanism had arisen in the Reich.
In 1940, Adolf Hitler, his burning shame forgotten, told Germany and the world that he was the hardest and most absolute ruler it had ever had, and that his war would be won without compromise.
In 1918, Marshal Ferdinand Foch sat in a railroad dining car in gloomy Compiegne forest and dictated the terms on which defeated Germany might sue for an armistice to avoid complete destruction.
In 1940, Hitler stood in the railroad car in the same forest and formally received the emissaries of defeated France, seeking an armistice in the name of Marshal Henri Philippe Petain who had been at Foch’s right hand in France’s day of greatest victory.
22 years ago, a Frenchman named Georges Clemenceau and a Welshman named David Lloyd George, who was destined to see disaster come again, crushed a broken Germany to the earth and circled her with armed foes that she might never rise again.
In 1940, Germany overran the continent and bound France in servitude.
War Babies Fight Now
In 1918, peace came to Europe’s little people, such as those of the Balkans. They thought that war had brought them to the threshold of a new era.
Today the armed power of Great Britain and the Axis powers surges toward a showdown in the mountains of Albania and Greece and all of the Balkans shudder under the imminent threat of another war.
1918 was a year of hunger and hope of revolt against the past and rejoicing in the future.
Babies born that year are grown now, Their hands touch the controls of bombers over Berlin; of U-boats lurking off Ireland; of cannon on the mountain roads of Greece; of machines everywhere turning out weapons for war.
Perhaps beyond the deadly puff of anti-aircraft shells; and beyond the submarine torpedo sights there will rise again the ancient ideal of a friendly world.
But not today.