Lou writes:

> Yesterday was Veterans Day (or Remembrance Day), not War Day.

In fact, it was exactly War Day. That was precisely its purpose. Armistice
Day was very much intended to remember the costs and consequences of an
extraordinarily destructive war. Armistice Day was the embodiment of the first of the
several times that we promised ourselves "never again."

World War I was described as "The War to End All Wars," simply because the
cost was so enormously high. A entire generation of young men from England,
France and Germany were very nearly eliminated from Western Europe because of "The
Great War."

And what did that extraordinary sacrifice buy us? What good came of the
mindless killing of hundreds of thousands of young men each year of the war?
Virtually nothing. WWI was the last cataclysmic spasm of a Europe dominated by
principalities and kingdoms, but it ushered in neither a golden age of
understanding and tolerance nor the rise of European democracies. It weakened everyone and
everything it touched.

Remembrance is exactly what's required of us all on Veteran's Day.

Wirt Atmar

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