At 11 o’clock in the morning of the memorable 11th day of November, 1918, that monster of destruction, war, was killed by a little group of men conferring in the box car headquarters of General Foch, in the Compiegne woods near Senlis. It had begun by ravaging Belgium in August, 1914; it ended with the wanton murder of non-combatants at Mézières in November, 1918. Throughout four years, three months and 10 days, it has ramped and raged over the land, under the sea and in the air, slaughtering, poisoning, ravaging, without cessation, killing wherever it could, robbing with colossal greed, defiling what it could neither kill nor carry away, leaving across the pages of his tory a trail of blood and filth and slime that all the tears of the angels cannot ever wash away.
But it left a world of nations free to work out their several destinies, self-determining, not subject any more to the threat of causeless war, at the hands of a government steeled to barbarity; a world cemented by blood and tears; a new understanding between nations of men because of mutual sacrifices in a common cause; a knowledge that the long night of medieval tyranny has faded out and a new day has come in which power shall arise from and be wielded by the peoples, never again by kings and emperors.
We have had our day of glorification and victory. It now remains to honor the men who have, given their lives for the cause of peace, and the men, more fortunate, who covered our flag once more with undying glory, the soldiers of the Marne, of Cantigny, of the great German repulse east of Rheims, of Chateau Thierry, of St Mihiel, the Argonne, and Sedan. The graves of our men have consecrated these immortal battlefields, and our sacred dead will live on in the memory of the republic forever. As for those who returned, crowned with victory, they shall be first and foremost under the roof tree of the great motherland who sent them out to certain honor and victory.
But, more important to the world is the complete restoration and permanent establishment of this peace over whose threshold alone, we have passed. Our prayer is that, with the help of God, and under His guidance, we may preserve something more than the stern negative of our victory, something positive of good, something of that divine light of men’s heroic sacrifice, something of new strength and understanding of life and of human potentialities.
From the editorial page of Queens Blues, Queens College student newspaper, Charlotte, N.C., Nov. 14, 1925
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/2018236529/1925-11-14/ed-1/seq-1/
No comments:
Post a Comment