Remembrance Day: Multiple Viewpoints
A good Remembrance Day/Armistice Day to my LJ friends.
"Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields."
"Year after year we gather and shout commands in the Square,
Wait for the Governor-General, say a few words of prayer,
Lay our wreaths in order, mothers and big shots first,
In memory of those who have made it to the other side of the worst."
(George Johnston)
"Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."
(Winston Churchill)
"We don't like to admit the war was even partly our fault cos so many of our people died.
And all the mourning's veiled the truth. It's not "lest we forget", it's "lest we remember".
That's what all this is about - the memorials, the Cenotaph, the two minutes' silence.
Because there is no better way of forgetting something than by commemorating it."
(The character Tom Irwin in History Boys)
"Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause."
(Julia Ward Howe)