Of all the actions that have sent waves across the world and through years that followed, World War 1 has to be up there on the list. Apart from its own horrors, it’s resolution contributed to the rise of fascism and World War II. World War II and it’s horrors shaped much of the direction of the post-war era, including setting up the conditions for the division of Europe and the cold war. All from a war that arguably started by accident and had no initial driving purpose.
As is often the case, at the same time as there is horror, there is humour, and at the same time as there are actions of great consequence there are actions of great futility. In an initial attempt to assassinate Arch Duke Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary, the direct trigger of events that lead to WWI, a man threw a bomb at the Arch Duke’s convertible but the bomb bounced off the back of the car. The man took a cyanide pill that was old and only made him vomit, then jumped into a river only 13 cm deep. The assassination was completed by others though, and what was an act of Serbian nationalism took ten weeks to become a world war.
Wars are terrible. World War 1 was a particularly terrible war. The consequences long after the war were equally terrible. This sort of wake-making is just the sort of thing that Wake I Make wants to talk about. The waves that spread across Europe and then other parts of the world starting in 1914 are waves of misery and of horror, of suffering and of death. The war ended on November 11 1918. 100 years ago this Sunday. Remembrance Day.
Remembrance Day chokes me up. That’s good. We need it. We will continue to need it. But I am starting to worry for Remembrance Day, and for remembrance.
We are not far off of the end of remembering the 200 year anniversary of the war of 1812 – the last war fought on Canadian soil. So I don’t really think we will forget WW1. I know Remembrance Day has undergone a bit of a revival in the last many years, after being taken for granted for so long. That revival likely came from renewed appreciation, even urgency, as the ranks of the soldiers from the First World War thinned, and disappeared, and the ranks of the soldiers from the Second World War now thin as well.
So that revival was also a prelude to the page starting to turn on World War 1 when there were no WW1 Veterans to march anymore. It will turn a little more after this year. Yes, on this 100th anniversary I hope and expect high attendance and viewership, but I don’t think that means we don’t need to worry, or that we shouldn’t plan its future.
100 More Years of Remembrance
Last year for Remembrance Day my daughter pictured war as a sword fight. This year she wants to remember our dog who just passed away. She is young and she will learn more. But what will she learn?
How much more understanding do the rest of us really have? We understand what Remembrance Day is for – for remembering our fallen soldiers. We are grateful to the military for defending us and doing who-knows-what that we can’t really imagine. Historical commemoration and thanks are very good things. But as a believer in the importance of history, I worry that we will lose track of the lessons of WW1 and of all that was destroyed in its wake. There are lessons for how easy wars are to start, for example.
As a democratic country we, the voters, need to remember that and try and be the cooler heads that prevail, including at the ballot box. Especially at the ballot box. Yes, look around and see all the places that is not happening.
Remembrance Day is not just about the world wars, of course, and there are newer things to remember too. That worries me as well.
What is war now? What will we be looking back on 100 years from now? War has changed. It is not better and it is not worse. War now is complicated. It is not two lines of soldiers on a battlefield. In the streets, who are civilians and who are not? Is Canada involved, or are we not? The answers to these questions are not clear anymore.
Will Canadian soldiers again be marching while our politicians say clearly ‘we are at war’? It seems likely that we will, but it also seems far off, not so much because we can’t see the next war about to erupt, but because war is so often done now under other names. Intervention, police training, democratic support, perhaps even peacekeeping. Who is a tyrant attacked by freedom fighters, and who is a leader trying to hold a country together against murderous rebels?
We need to remember new things along side the old lessons. We need to remember the White Helmets in the Syrian war. They were not Canadian at the time, but many are now. We need to remember those that defended their families in a war zone and those that risked their own lives to help people escape war. Perhaps we also need to remember to sometime get around to also remembering those that escaped; that the world now has 25 million refugees and 40 million internally displaced persons. Yes, there is World Refugee Day. When is that again? How did we commemorate it?
This Year on Remembrance Day
I do not want to confuse the purpose of Remembrance Day and lose the message. I don’t want to cast any shadows on the respect for those that have sacrificed their lives in service to Canada. But I do want us to recognize others better than we do now. Remembrance Day needs to connect with people across the country, not be a policy decision made in an office somewhere, so I will only go so far as to tell you what I will do on Sunday.
I will take a moment of silence at 11:00 and I will think about the miserable First World War ending exactly a century ago. I will think about the freedom we owe to our victory in WWII. I will think about our soldiers in wars since, fighting to make the world a safer place. I will think about all those soldiers that died defending our country. I will think about those soldiers that didn’t die but have lasting wounds, including those we cannot see, such as PTSD.
That will more than fill a moment of silence.
Also on Sunday, I don’t know when, I will remember more. I will think about those that didn’t choose to fight for their country but were forced to fight for their family and their community. They too have fought and died, or suffered unimaginable loss, or seen unimaginable things.
There are many people like this around the world, but there are also some that are Canadians. It seems naïve to think about modern war and exclude them from our thoughts. I don’t know when or how we go about collectively thinking about them, but they are a big part of the story of war now, of the lessons of war, and possibly of the future history of war.
On Sunday I will take another moment to think about them. It will not be a moment taken away from thinking about what I’ve always thought about on Remembrance Day. It will be a moment taken away from thinking about lunch or about sports or about the weather.
We need to remember and heed the lessons of the wars of the past, well beyond this 100th anniversary of remembering. We the civilian voters also need to be making notes on the wars of the present, so we can help our country do its best to avoid –and when necessary fight – wars in the future. We need to remember all these things with continuing urgency because wakes are easy to make, as a country.
That’s a lot to remember.
References:
- Basic info on the assassination of ArchDuke Ferdinand: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Archduke_Franz_Ferdinand
- Refugee stats from: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/refugee
- For more on the White Helmets: www.cbc.ca/news/politics/white-helmets-canada-arrival-1.4880277
