Armistice Day

In Europe, 11th November is Armistice Day. It's taken very seriously in Belgium, where the day is a public holiday. I learned this the hard way this morning, when the train never came, and I eventually had to decide to take my own car to work. So much for "integration" with the Belgians, by the way - I wasn't even aware it was a public holiday... The EU institutions are partly to blame, because for some reason they do not deem Armistice Day to be worth celebrating as a holiday.

The Belgians have good reason to commemorate the official end of World War I. The country was devastated by the madness. I came to learn of the folly of this war through reading Ben Elton's "The First Casualty" (referring to the truth, which is said to be war's first casualty). There I read of the way the war was conducted, with ground troops charging at each other beyond their own trenches into no-man's land, trying to capture a few metres of enemy territory. The defenders would simply shoot the chargers down, and the latter would drop dead like flies. Utter madness. Almost 20 million soldiers died this way, just 90 years ago. Twenty million pawns, all of them leaving behind grieving loved ones, wives, parents, young children, all in the name of power play.

Did the world learn from past mistakes? Like hell it did. Twenty years later a bigger world war broke out, this time claiming many dozens of victims. And following that there were others, scattered all over the planet. Wars are being fought, and people are dying, this very moment.

What a tragedy.

I wonder. Will we ever learn?