Let the Bells Chime

I was born in 1964, just under twenty years after the end of the Second World War, and just over forty-five past the end of the First.

I joined Cubs, and spent many of my remembrance days at the Cenotaph, dripping in the West Coast rain, feeling as miserable as I'd imagined the soldiers in the trenches did. In that sort of atmosphere, it really drove home the futility of war; the human cost. Shivering with the cold and the wet, I could easily imagine what it would have been like to die in combat.

Time has passed; and now we're about to hit a hundred years since the 'Great War' ended. It had many names, including 'the War to End All Wars.' As we know now, through the long eye of history, it didn't. Not by a long shot. In fact, led directly to the Second World War. But that's another story.

The First World War figures prominently in Canadian history: Canada is fancied to have been 'forged in fire'; and, indeed, Canadians fighting in Europe earned the admiration and respect of the world. And, it's true, the modern shape of Canada began to emerge during and immediately after the War; the era of Big Government began during this time. Our economy was reshaped as Canadians proved they could manufacture with the best of them; thus, the birth of conspicuous consumption. As we won decisively in such battles as Vimy Ridge, we gained confidence that our still-fledgling nation could stand up for itself on the world stage--something that came in very handy just twenty years later, when war broke out again, and Canada played a key role.

I think a hundred years is enough perspective to stand back and examine events critically. The causes of the First World War were many; but, like dominoes ready to be knocked over, war was inevitable however things ultimately played out.

It was a wholesale slaughter of human beings. You live long enough, you hear things--like the adage about the British gunnery officer, manning a cannon, who saw a group of soldiers. After some debate about which side they belonged to, he uttered something like "No matter--can't pass up a target like that!" and fired the cannon.

Apocryphal or not, it did echo the attitudes prevalent at that time--and the power structure that made that possible.

This Sunday, November 11, bells will be ringing across Canada. Go outside. Listen to them. And while you're doing that, spare a thought for the dozens of millions of people killed during the War, from both sides.

And in just a little over twenty-five years, we'll do it all again.

I just hope we've learned something in the last hundred years.