They ran out the clock
That's the most important thing to remember about Armistice Day: they set an end date, and then they made the pawns go on killing each other for the rest of the week, while the king and bishops got to move off the board in safety, because class solidarity still trumped a war, same as in the Middle Ages. And they wanted everyone to pretend that it could be switched off like that, and everyone go back to normal, except of course it doesn't work that way and the things broken kept collapsing, like countries, and the masters of war who'd gotten richer than ever during the past four years and three months had no intention of letting that profit base evaporate, even as they smirked at the words "to end all wars."
A couple of past Nothing New posts on the Great War:
88 Years, Still Having Flashbacks
Because it's always Remembrance Day around here
Excerpts from "Bury The Dead" (1936), a play I found even more politically charged than Dalton Trumbo's Johnny Got His Gun
IOKIYAA: Louvain 1914 revisited
and a contextual follow-up on the human toll by someone who saw it from several sides firsthand, and all the corporate corruption that battened on the battlefields:
"War is a Racket"
A couple of past Nothing New posts on the Great War:
88 Years, Still Having Flashbacks
Because it's always Remembrance Day around here
Excerpts from "Bury The Dead" (1936), a play I found even more politically charged than Dalton Trumbo's Johnny Got His Gun
IOKIYAA: Louvain 1914 revisited
and a contextual follow-up on the human toll by someone who saw it from several sides firsthand, and all the corporate corruption that battened on the battlefields:
"War is a Racket"