The signing of an armistice on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month marked the end of the terrible bloodshed of World War I. New technology had made that conflict horrible in ways never before imaginable: The stalemate of trench warfare and the stench of poison gas nearly destroyed an entire generation in Europe, leaving an estimated 16 million combatants and civilians dead.
So on Nov. 11, 1918, the idea of a lasting peace had great appeal. There was a hope that World War I would be “the war to end all wars.” Our Congress passed a resolution in 1926 setting a holiday to mark the end of World War I and “the resumption by the people of the United States of peaceful relations with other nations, which we hope may never again be severed.” It said Armistice Day, as it was known, should be commemorated with “thanksgiving and prayer and exercises designed to perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding between nations.”
Some might think that the wars that followed in the 20th century — World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Middle East, which continues to boil — proved those hopeful feelings following World War I to be a failure. But on the contrary, those conflicts made it even clearer that we must hold to the ideas of freedom, faith in God and a respect for all people if we want peace and prosperity. Because when we drifted away from them, our world fell prey again to the menace of dictators, hatred and death.
In 1954, President Eisenhower, himself no stranger to warfare, issued a proclamation changing the holiday to be Veterans Day considering that the Nov. 11 holiday commemorating World War I by then included millions of additional soldiers who had risked or given their lives for their country.
“On that day let us solemnly remember the sacrifices of all those who fought so valiantly, on the seas, in the air, and on foreign shores, to preserve our heritage of freedom, and let us reconsecrate ourselves to the task of promoting an enduring peace so that their efforts shall not have been in vain,” Eisenhower wrote.
Now 63 years later, the world is much different in some ways, but still the same in the basics of human nature, which tend toward brutality and ugliness if not checked by the ideals of Western Civilization that have lifted up our nation and world to a higher, better level of existence.
Unfortunately because of the strength of those destructive tendencies toward war, there remains a time when people of goodwill have to stand up to defend righteousness in the face of evil. Veterans have done that and deserve our national and individual thanks. Columbia as a community does that through the annual veterans picnic, the ceremony at the courthouse and the photos of veterans published in today’s newspaper, among other ways that are all important and needed.
And, as President Eisenhower said, in thinking about veterans, each of us must also rededicate ourselves to promoting peace so that their sacrifices will endure for future generations.
— Charlie Smith
