| The Remembrance Day Address; A moment of relfection | |
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| Topic Started: Nov 11 2008, 02:00 PM (47 Views) | |
| Caius of Xen | Nov 11 2008, 02:00 PM Post #1 |
Xanatos Speed Chess Champion
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Today is Remembrance Day. The anniversary of the armistice which ended the First World War. This is the day when the people of Great Britain, Her Commonwealth, the United States, and many other countries throughout the world mourn the loss of those who have sacrificed their lives to ensure the freedoms that we take for granted. It is generally accepted that at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, that everyone stop what they are doing to reserve time to pay tribute for the sacrifices of those who came before us with two minutes of quiet reflection. These are my reflections. This is my Remembrance Day Address. Exactly 90 years ago, on November 11th 1918, all fighting ceased on the Western Front of the First World War. One of the bloodiest conflicts in the history of humanity had come to an end. The men who joined up in the glorious summer of 1914, who had taken up arms for freedom, peace and the mad dreams of mustached despots, who had fought and died by the thousands in the hell of Ypres, in the cauldron of Verdun and the bloodbath of the Somme had finally achieved peace, peace in their time. They swore that they would never allow such horrors to be repeated again. The years that followed would be the most tragic in modern history, not because of sheer human suffering, but because those noble ideals which ended the first Great War at Versailles would be twisted, corrupted by those who would seize what they felt they deserved and those who would let them do so if it meant peace. The time was ripe for a confrontation, to show that the free world was willing to sacrifice again to protect their gains. The men of the first war did not do so. They had sworn not to repeat the horrors of the past no matter what the price. In reliving the past, they had doomed the future to a far greater cataclysm. They had lacked the will to take a stand. Who could blame them? Nobody who had seen the slaughter of Tannenburg or the firestorm of Vimy would dare wish to repeat it. It was the men of the next generation whom the world turned to. They had grown listening to the horror stories of the first war. Even as men old long before their time sold their souls to keep the peace, Young men prepared for war, prepared to face the hell of a new horror to keep themselves between a monstrous enemy and their loved ones, their nation and the millions of innocents who entrusted them with their safety. Those men would go on to new hells, and die in new numbers; at Narvik, Arras, Dunkirk, Pearl Harbour, Midway, El Alamein, Stalingrad, Kasserine Pass, Ortona, Kursk, Warsaw, Normandy and then deep inside the rotting heart of Hitler's Thousand Year Reich and the bloodthirsty maw of the Japanese Empire. Once again, there was peace, once again it was sworn that such horrors would never be repeated. So, the cycle continued. There was peace, of a fashion, and then new power blocs emerged, new frictions sparked and new horrors were started. Once again, the veterans of the old war turned to their own children, and those children fought and died with the same ferocious bravery of their forebears. So, more annexes were added to the great halls of the dead; Inchon, The Falklands, Kandahar, Basra. Over the cycles we have learned that the price of freedom is indeed, eternal vigilance, but also that vigilance must be fed on a stead diet of young, courageous blood. So, in every time, every place, young men and women defy the forces of tyranny and volunteer to protect their peoples in a hell which they know they will face. It is these soldiers that we honour on this day. Those who marched off to hell prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice, and those who did not falter on their promise. Our teachers, our leaders, the society around us, they say that today is a day of sorrow, for the loss of so many. I disagree. Today is a day of joy, a day where we remember that men and women, both living and dead, have had the extraordinary courage and nobility of spirit to give up their lives for the freedom and security of total strangers. To mourn their loss would be to fall into the past. To enshrine them as examples would be a step into the future, a reminder of what we upright apes who call ourselves humanity can be, what we MUST be. Remembrance Day is not a day to cry over how those brave men and women died, but to celebrate the fact that such brave men and women lived. -Paul "Cataphrak" Wang November 11th, 2008 |
 CinC Freikorps General of the Terran New Model Army "The Evil Overlord kills for fun and profit. The Good Overlord kills for the good of his nation. The "Pacifist Overlord" is more accurately described as "The Former-Overlord". -When I am Benevolent Overlord;  . | |
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| dinowoman | Nov 14 2008, 06:41 PM Post #2 |
Living Fossil
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That's an interesting take. I do think we should mourn their loss because it reminds us of the horrors of war, and that war is not something glorious, as propaganda used to depict it, but something horrific, which should be avoided unless absolutely necessary. But I agree with you that it's right to celebrate the bravery of the people who were willing to sacrifuce their lives for the rest of us, and to remember that when war does become the only option, without such people there would be no hope. |
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3:44 PM Jan 6