The Spirit of j Armistice Day
THE YPRES TIMES
6
By Philip Gibbs.
•t.f
BEFORE and after each anniversary of Armistice Day one hears the plea here and
there that it is time this commemoration should be abandoned. Some of those
who served during the war prefer that its memory should be forgotten, and there
is the younger generation, many of whom are already grown up, who do not realise,
it is said, the full meaning of Armistice Day and the spiritual significance of the Two
Minutes' Silence. Certainly one young man I know frankly confessed that all this meant
absolutely nothing to him. He could not remember the war, he disliked what he had
read about it, he regarded it as a great crime and a great folly, and he failed to under
stand why its memory should be perpetuated. Then there are the young children.
They are mystified by this annual silence when their elders stand bareheaded before
some cross where there are many wreaths and red poppies. What does it mean
I was asked by one of them. What are all those poppies for Why does everybody
stand so quiet I confess I find it difficult to answer such questions by child minds.
I hate to tell them of all the slaughter, and to let them know so soon the ugliness of
war, and all the death and agony it causéd to the young manhood of the world. Yet
one day they must know and will want to know, and have a right to know.
There is no glorification of war in this annual remembrance of that day in 1918
when the bugles blew the Cease Fire, and the guns were silent after four years, and
death no longer demanded the enormous sacrifice of young life. On the contrary it
seems to me I am certain that the Two Minutes' Silence each year is the time
when vast multitudes of men and women idealise most deeply and poignantly the blessing
of peace and make a vow in their hearts, consciously or unconsciously, that they will
dedicate themselves anew to the spirit of peace and goodwill among nations so that
never again, if they can make this spirit prevail, shall there be a war among civilised
nations. In this country, anyhow, where Armistice Day is most solemnly celebrated,
that is the deeply abiding resolve of the silent crowds, if I have any glimpse into the
soul of our people and I believe that the abandonment of this memorial would not
mean that we had put war out of our minds, but had put peace out of our minds, in
■despair, or in cynical forgetfulness of past emotion.
But there is another reason for Armistice Day. Shall we forget, shall we allow
the forgetfulness of, those millions of young men of ours who went into the trenches
and endured everything that modern warfare demanded of them year after year
Shall we forget their valour? Shall we forget the sacrifice of a million dead? Shall
we forget the heroic humour with which they marched along the roads of war knowing
what was ahead of them at journey's end, or that comradeship of the trenches which
had in it all the best quality of youth, or that laughter which rang out behind the lines
in all their billets and camps and sometimes even as I heard it, between bursts of
high-explosive fire searching for their bodies We should be untrue to our own heritage
and spirit, we should be unfaithful to all those boys, if we allowed remembrance of them
to fade out of our minds even because of hatred of war itself.
As a looker on of that war a chronicler of its daily history I am obsessed still
by its tragedy and by its abomination. Year after year I walked amidst all this death
of youth our most splendid youth ahd saw the price that was paid in the blinding
and gassing and maiming of manhood. I have written about all that side of war with
bitterness, and sometimes with rage. I hive pledged myself to use any power of words
I may have to prevent any repetition of' such history, if it is possible in this age and
world of passion and fear. I am I confess deeply apprehensive of the future even
