Remembrance Day is coming. More accurately it is Armistice Day. The armistice between Germany and the Western Powers was signed at Compiègne in France on the morning of 11 November 1918, after four years of war. Sadly, there are heart-chilling parallels to today.

Then, as now, atrocities at the beginning of a war were ceaselessly exploited by propagandists to justify a savagely disproportionate response. In August 1914, the German invasion of neutral Belgium — which killed up to 7000 civilians in the first weeks of fighting — was endlessly cited to vindicate a war of avenging angels, on many fronts over four years, that eventually killed more than 16 million people, while seeding still more bloody wars.

Then, as now, a horrific war of industrialised mass-killing was prolonged by callous leaders, on both sides, essentially to save their political skins. From 1914 to 1918, a dozen opportunities for a negotiated peace — proposals from the Dutch, the Swedes, the Americans, the Pope and the Germans — were sabotaged by those leaders who shrieked that only a crushing military victory, only a “knock-out blow”, could lead to “a lasting peace”.

Then, as now, food was used as a brutal weapon of war. In 1914, the British Government proclaimed food contraband and a starvation blockade of Germany was imposed by the British Navy, which eventually killed up to three-quarters of a million Germans, mainly the poor, children and the elderly.

Then, as now, opportunities for an earlier ceasefire were sabotaged. In the first week of October 1918, a new German Government requested an armistice from US President Woodrow Wilson, while publicly accepting his peace program; but howls of protests from the war-at-any-price politicians........

© Pearls and Irritations