The Great Silence - Armistice 1918

23 On a personal, individual level there are two great lessons for all of us today. Firstly by understanding the courage, the self-sacrifice, the fortitude of those in uniform and at home we can learn that anything is possible if we set our minds to it with determination and purpose. Secondly, by understanding that hostility between peoples can be encouraged or diminished by those that lead them, we can all of us try to persuade our leaders into behaviour that is co-operative rather than confrontational. We can start to do this by each of us behaving in a civil, helpful and compassionate way to all those with whom we interact, whether at school, in the workplace or in the world of politics. Every time we troll the internet or bully in the playground or in the office we send a message that collectively we would rather fight than talk. Thus are wars started. On this centenary of the end of the ‘war to end all wars’ the best way to honour those who fought and those who sustained the nation at home would be to vow to do our personal bit to help change a hostile world into a peaceful one. This does not mean that we must not all be ready to stand up for what is right, and be prepared to fight for it if that is necessary; all free peoples must be willing and able to protect their freedoms. But if we all share a conscious preference to resolve our differences with the hand of friendship rather than the fist of belligerence we may indeed one day create a world “from which war, with all the horror which our generation has added to it, shall be banished, and in which national bitterness and hate, selfishness and greed, shall flee abashed before the spirits of the dead.” French postcard of the 1919 Fêtes de la Victoire showing Scottish soldiers passing under the Arc de Triomphe.