Armistice and Remembrance
a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the Second Congregational Meeting House on Nantucket Island
Sunday November 11, 2001
***
In 1933, the members of the Oxford Union, a student debating society affiliated with England's Oxford University, voted the following proposition: "Resolved, that this House will in no circumstances fight for its King or Country." In his subsequent history of the Second World War, Winston Churchill pointed to this "shameful" resolution as an example of the "lethargy and blindness" which caused the British nation "to cower from the menace of foreign peril, frothing pious platitudes while foemen forged their arms." He adds: "It was easy to laugh off such an episode in England, but in Germany, in Russia, in Italy, in Japan, the idea of a decadent, degenerate Britain took deep root and swayed many calculations."
One of the supposed lessons of the Second World War, which we have heard repeated so often lately in justification of our own military operations, is that the appeasement of tyrants by reasonable men and women only fuels the fires of their evil aspirations; that peace is best maintained through strength, and constant vigilance in the defense of freedom. But the students of the Oxford Union in 1933, who as children had helplessly witnessed from afar as their fathers, their uncles, and their elder brothers perished senselessly in the mechanical slaughter of the trenches along the Western Front, had drawn from that experience very different lessons of war and peace. Their resolution reflected not their cowardice, but rather their commitment that never again must the civilized world allow itself to become engulfed in warfare.
Today is Armistice Day, the anniversary of the end of the First World War. And I want to use this opportunity to talk a little about issues of war and peace in a larger context, because it seems to me that much of the original spirit of this holiday has been lost in recent times and especially in recent days. We now celebrate "Veterans Day,” on which we honor the sacrifices of those who served in wartime; we talk about the heros of the “Greatest Generation,” who defended freedom and democracy from the threat of Facist totalitarianism a half-century ago, and how their legacy has now descended on to us. But we tend to ignore the original sense of the word "Armistice" -- literally, a setting aside of arms, and I personally would like to see a little more of that sentiment observed on this holiday.
The desire for genuine peace, it seems to me, is a universal concern among religious people of good faith; and has been for as long as human history has been recorded. "Blessed are the Peacemakers,” it says in Scripture, “for they shall be called God's Children." Peacemaking is more than just the elimination of the threat of war. It is also an active, dynamic, creative way of living which seeks to cultivate the seeds of true harmony and justice even as it cuts away at the roots of conflict and discord, and thus it invariably operates at two distinct levels. The first level might be thought of as one of abstract policy -- the pragmatic things which governments or other organizations do or fail to do to in order to avoid the possibility of war. The second level is one of individual contribution and commitment -- a level based on values and principles, which is fundamentally religious in nature.
These two levels of peacemaking are quite distinct, although they are also profoundly interdependent; and both are subject to the "judgment of history," to which our politicians so frequently appeal. Yet the lessons both of history and of religion are by no means always clear or unambiguous. If, indeed, Churchill was correct in attributing at least some of the blame for the Second World War to the strident pacifism typified by the students of the Oxford Union, it is equally important to remember that it was a similar sentiment expressed by students and others in the 1960's which eventually brought an end to our nation's military involvement in Southeast Asia, just as it was a naive application of the opposite "lesson" which got us involved in that conflict in the first place. Familiarity with policy without a corresponding personal investment simply reduces one to the status of "armchair strategist" -- war and peace become somebody else's problem, while we stand around the sidelines and second-guess. And likewise commitment and action without a solid understanding of the lessons of history leaves open the very real possibility of becoming part of the problem rather than part of the solution -- resulting in a situation where well-intentioned acts merely serve to create the opposite effect from what was intended.
The tragic irony of our current situation is rooted in precisely this kind of “disconnect” between the pragmatic and the idealistic. I am enough of a historian to know that there are times when the use of military force is an appropriate option. There are times, in fact, when it is the only option. But the methods we use to pursue our goals must never be allowed to undermine the very values we aspire to defend. How can be claim to be champions of freedom and democracy when we so freely disregard the same democratic liberties that so many American veterans have fought and died to protect? When emotions run high, it is easy to motivate people to follow a course of action which promises to strike at the heart of the problem, and then to justify those actions with the claim that desperate times call for desperate measures. But the real lesson of history is that actions, ultimately, speak louder than words; that rhetoric can only conceal reality for a limited time; and that when our deeds contradict our cherished values and principles, our values and principles become the ultimate losers, and we ourselves become our own worst enemies.
By the 11th of November, 1914, the Great Powers of Europe found themselves locked into a stalemated war of attrition which none of them had wanted, but which national pride and rigid mobilization schedules had drawn them to like moths to a candle. After the initial German offensive was blunted by French reinforcements literally rushed to the front in Parisian taxicabs, and the bloody battles in Flanders during the "race to the sea," in which four-fifths of the original British Expeditionary Force were killed, the conflict became deadlocked in a seemingly endless routine of bombardments, raids, and "standing to," in which 5000 men might perish on a "quiet" day, and casualties soared into the hundreds of thousands during "major" offensives, which often resulted in only a few hundred yards of territory lost or gained and the "exchange [of] one wet-bottomed trench for another." Writing in her book The Guns of August, historian Barbara Tuchman notes that: "...with the advent of winter came the slow deadly sinking into the stalemate of trench warfare. Running from Switzerland to the Channel like a gangrenous wound across French and Belgian territory, the trenches determined the war of position and attrition, the brutal, mud-filled, murderous insanity known as the Western Front." Only after both sides had succeeded in slaughtering an entire generation of young men, while at the same time bankrupting their economies and subjecting their civilian populations to various degrees of hardship and privation, did the influx of fresh troops and war materiel from across the ocean help break the stalemate and cause the German government to sue for peace.
Twenty-five years later, French and German armies once again faced each other along the Western Front, from behind the fortifications of the Maginot and Siegfried lines, in an episode which became known as the Phoney War or "Sitzkrieg." This time the French soldiers were under orders not to fire at Germans they observed moving on the other side of the no-man's land -- because, after all, it would only encourage them to fire back. Subsequent historical analysis sugggests that had the Allies acted decisively within the first few weeks or months of the war, Hitler might easily have been defeated in short order -- indeed, the officers of the German General staff, who also recalled the terrible lessons of 1914, were ready to dispose of their Fuhrer themselves and sue for peace at the first opportunity. But instead the Allies refused to act, and when the Blitzkrieg finally fell in the west, in the spring of the following year, the fortifications of the Maginot line were rapidly bypassed by the German Panzers, France fell in a matter of weeks, and only the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force in small, civilian-owned boats from Dunkirk preserved the possibility of any resistance in the west.
Perhaps no one could have foreseen the coming of a Hitler in 1918, when at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month the guns stopped firing along the Western front. Confined to a military hospital recovering from a poison gas attack, this insignificant Austrian corporal felt betrayed and disgraced by his country's surrender to the Allies; while the punitive conditions of the Treaty of Versailles created more than enough resentment among the vanquished to enable his later rise to power on a platform of cultural pride, ethnic hatred, and restored national honor. Had the victors of the Great War agreed to a just and honorable peace, Hitler might simply have remained a failed artist and frustrated member of the lunatic fringe. It's difficult to say about these things. But the inevitable temptation to punish our enemies rather than behaving generously in victory is rarely a pattern conducive to real peace. Peacemakers everywhere might well take to heart the sentiments of Lincoln, which I’ve quoted now from this pulpit on several occasions, that one best destroys one's enemies by making them one's friends.
That opportunity existed on Armistice Day in 1918, and in many ways it should remain a valid agenda for all peacemakers today. Woodrow Wilson's "Fourteen Points," first articulated shortly after America's entry into the Great War, provide an insightful context for the understanding of such a peace which has not lost its currency even after four generations. I know 14 points may seem like a lot -- in fact, a French diplomat at the time, Georges Clemenceau, pointed out that "The Good Lord had only ten!" -- but the essence of Wilson's vision can be summarized without the need for delving in to his specific proposals for individual nation-states.
Wilson called for an end to secret treaties and military alliances, and their replacement by "Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at" and diplomacy which "shall proceed frankly and always in the public view." He insisted on "Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas," and "the removal, so far as possible, of all economic barriers and the establishment of an equality of trade conditions among all the nations consenting to the peace." He called for a general reduction of national armaments "to the lowest points consistent with domestic safety," and for the "free, open-minded and absolutely impartial adjustment of all [territorial] claims," with "strict observance of the principle that in determining questions of sovereignty, the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined." Above all, he called for the formation of "a general association of nations...under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to the great and small alike." This basic framework of international law, embodying so much of that simple schoolhouse ethic of fair play on a level field, is the legacy which the college professor and Nobel Laureate who served as our 28th President has left to posterity; and on many levels it might still serve well as a foundation for our nation's current foreign policy.
On the more personal, religious level, the lessons of Armistice Day are not so easily summarized. The experience of war on almost any level frequently results in two entirely contradictory realizations. The first is a healthy level of cynical skepticism concerning anything which has not been adequately tested by fire; and the second an equally irrational Hope that the sacrifices made by ones self and one's comrades have not been in vain, and that beyond the unspeakable horror of the battlefield lies an equally unspeakable promise of a better way, which somehow can redeem the lives of those who have suffered and died, and bring meaning to an activity which is intrinsically is without it. Without this Hope perhaps there would be no war; yet there could certainly be no lasting peace as well -- for in time the innocent would once more fall victim to the wicked, and avarice displace the role of compassion in our lives. This skeptical hope born of suffering and sacrifice is the most critical lesson of Armistice Day. It is a lesson we simply cannot afford to forget if we truly wish to create a safer and more peaceful world.
at the Second Congregational Meeting House on Nantucket Island
Sunday November 11, 2001
***
In 1933, the members of the Oxford Union, a student debating society affiliated with England's Oxford University, voted the following proposition: "Resolved, that this House will in no circumstances fight for its King or Country." In his subsequent history of the Second World War, Winston Churchill pointed to this "shameful" resolution as an example of the "lethargy and blindness" which caused the British nation "to cower from the menace of foreign peril, frothing pious platitudes while foemen forged their arms." He adds: "It was easy to laugh off such an episode in England, but in Germany, in Russia, in Italy, in Japan, the idea of a decadent, degenerate Britain took deep root and swayed many calculations."
One of the supposed lessons of the Second World War, which we have heard repeated so often lately in justification of our own military operations, is that the appeasement of tyrants by reasonable men and women only fuels the fires of their evil aspirations; that peace is best maintained through strength, and constant vigilance in the defense of freedom. But the students of the Oxford Union in 1933, who as children had helplessly witnessed from afar as their fathers, their uncles, and their elder brothers perished senselessly in the mechanical slaughter of the trenches along the Western Front, had drawn from that experience very different lessons of war and peace. Their resolution reflected not their cowardice, but rather their commitment that never again must the civilized world allow itself to become engulfed in warfare.
Today is Armistice Day, the anniversary of the end of the First World War. And I want to use this opportunity to talk a little about issues of war and peace in a larger context, because it seems to me that much of the original spirit of this holiday has been lost in recent times and especially in recent days. We now celebrate "Veterans Day,” on which we honor the sacrifices of those who served in wartime; we talk about the heros of the “Greatest Generation,” who defended freedom and democracy from the threat of Facist totalitarianism a half-century ago, and how their legacy has now descended on to us. But we tend to ignore the original sense of the word "Armistice" -- literally, a setting aside of arms, and I personally would like to see a little more of that sentiment observed on this holiday.
The desire for genuine peace, it seems to me, is a universal concern among religious people of good faith; and has been for as long as human history has been recorded. "Blessed are the Peacemakers,” it says in Scripture, “for they shall be called God's Children." Peacemaking is more than just the elimination of the threat of war. It is also an active, dynamic, creative way of living which seeks to cultivate the seeds of true harmony and justice even as it cuts away at the roots of conflict and discord, and thus it invariably operates at two distinct levels. The first level might be thought of as one of abstract policy -- the pragmatic things which governments or other organizations do or fail to do to in order to avoid the possibility of war. The second level is one of individual contribution and commitment -- a level based on values and principles, which is fundamentally religious in nature.
These two levels of peacemaking are quite distinct, although they are also profoundly interdependent; and both are subject to the "judgment of history," to which our politicians so frequently appeal. Yet the lessons both of history and of religion are by no means always clear or unambiguous. If, indeed, Churchill was correct in attributing at least some of the blame for the Second World War to the strident pacifism typified by the students of the Oxford Union, it is equally important to remember that it was a similar sentiment expressed by students and others in the 1960's which eventually brought an end to our nation's military involvement in Southeast Asia, just as it was a naive application of the opposite "lesson" which got us involved in that conflict in the first place. Familiarity with policy without a corresponding personal investment simply reduces one to the status of "armchair strategist" -- war and peace become somebody else's problem, while we stand around the sidelines and second-guess. And likewise commitment and action without a solid understanding of the lessons of history leaves open the very real possibility of becoming part of the problem rather than part of the solution -- resulting in a situation where well-intentioned acts merely serve to create the opposite effect from what was intended.
The tragic irony of our current situation is rooted in precisely this kind of “disconnect” between the pragmatic and the idealistic. I am enough of a historian to know that there are times when the use of military force is an appropriate option. There are times, in fact, when it is the only option. But the methods we use to pursue our goals must never be allowed to undermine the very values we aspire to defend. How can be claim to be champions of freedom and democracy when we so freely disregard the same democratic liberties that so many American veterans have fought and died to protect? When emotions run high, it is easy to motivate people to follow a course of action which promises to strike at the heart of the problem, and then to justify those actions with the claim that desperate times call for desperate measures. But the real lesson of history is that actions, ultimately, speak louder than words; that rhetoric can only conceal reality for a limited time; and that when our deeds contradict our cherished values and principles, our values and principles become the ultimate losers, and we ourselves become our own worst enemies.
By the 11th of November, 1914, the Great Powers of Europe found themselves locked into a stalemated war of attrition which none of them had wanted, but which national pride and rigid mobilization schedules had drawn them to like moths to a candle. After the initial German offensive was blunted by French reinforcements literally rushed to the front in Parisian taxicabs, and the bloody battles in Flanders during the "race to the sea," in which four-fifths of the original British Expeditionary Force were killed, the conflict became deadlocked in a seemingly endless routine of bombardments, raids, and "standing to," in which 5000 men might perish on a "quiet" day, and casualties soared into the hundreds of thousands during "major" offensives, which often resulted in only a few hundred yards of territory lost or gained and the "exchange [of] one wet-bottomed trench for another." Writing in her book The Guns of August, historian Barbara Tuchman notes that: "...with the advent of winter came the slow deadly sinking into the stalemate of trench warfare. Running from Switzerland to the Channel like a gangrenous wound across French and Belgian territory, the trenches determined the war of position and attrition, the brutal, mud-filled, murderous insanity known as the Western Front." Only after both sides had succeeded in slaughtering an entire generation of young men, while at the same time bankrupting their economies and subjecting their civilian populations to various degrees of hardship and privation, did the influx of fresh troops and war materiel from across the ocean help break the stalemate and cause the German government to sue for peace.
Twenty-five years later, French and German armies once again faced each other along the Western Front, from behind the fortifications of the Maginot and Siegfried lines, in an episode which became known as the Phoney War or "Sitzkrieg." This time the French soldiers were under orders not to fire at Germans they observed moving on the other side of the no-man's land -- because, after all, it would only encourage them to fire back. Subsequent historical analysis sugggests that had the Allies acted decisively within the first few weeks or months of the war, Hitler might easily have been defeated in short order -- indeed, the officers of the German General staff, who also recalled the terrible lessons of 1914, were ready to dispose of their Fuhrer themselves and sue for peace at the first opportunity. But instead the Allies refused to act, and when the Blitzkrieg finally fell in the west, in the spring of the following year, the fortifications of the Maginot line were rapidly bypassed by the German Panzers, France fell in a matter of weeks, and only the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force in small, civilian-owned boats from Dunkirk preserved the possibility of any resistance in the west.
Perhaps no one could have foreseen the coming of a Hitler in 1918, when at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month the guns stopped firing along the Western front. Confined to a military hospital recovering from a poison gas attack, this insignificant Austrian corporal felt betrayed and disgraced by his country's surrender to the Allies; while the punitive conditions of the Treaty of Versailles created more than enough resentment among the vanquished to enable his later rise to power on a platform of cultural pride, ethnic hatred, and restored national honor. Had the victors of the Great War agreed to a just and honorable peace, Hitler might simply have remained a failed artist and frustrated member of the lunatic fringe. It's difficult to say about these things. But the inevitable temptation to punish our enemies rather than behaving generously in victory is rarely a pattern conducive to real peace. Peacemakers everywhere might well take to heart the sentiments of Lincoln, which I’ve quoted now from this pulpit on several occasions, that one best destroys one's enemies by making them one's friends.
That opportunity existed on Armistice Day in 1918, and in many ways it should remain a valid agenda for all peacemakers today. Woodrow Wilson's "Fourteen Points," first articulated shortly after America's entry into the Great War, provide an insightful context for the understanding of such a peace which has not lost its currency even after four generations. I know 14 points may seem like a lot -- in fact, a French diplomat at the time, Georges Clemenceau, pointed out that "The Good Lord had only ten!" -- but the essence of Wilson's vision can be summarized without the need for delving in to his specific proposals for individual nation-states.
Wilson called for an end to secret treaties and military alliances, and their replacement by "Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at" and diplomacy which "shall proceed frankly and always in the public view." He insisted on "Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas," and "the removal, so far as possible, of all economic barriers and the establishment of an equality of trade conditions among all the nations consenting to the peace." He called for a general reduction of national armaments "to the lowest points consistent with domestic safety," and for the "free, open-minded and absolutely impartial adjustment of all [territorial] claims," with "strict observance of the principle that in determining questions of sovereignty, the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined." Above all, he called for the formation of "a general association of nations...under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to the great and small alike." This basic framework of international law, embodying so much of that simple schoolhouse ethic of fair play on a level field, is the legacy which the college professor and Nobel Laureate who served as our 28th President has left to posterity; and on many levels it might still serve well as a foundation for our nation's current foreign policy.
On the more personal, religious level, the lessons of Armistice Day are not so easily summarized. The experience of war on almost any level frequently results in two entirely contradictory realizations. The first is a healthy level of cynical skepticism concerning anything which has not been adequately tested by fire; and the second an equally irrational Hope that the sacrifices made by ones self and one's comrades have not been in vain, and that beyond the unspeakable horror of the battlefield lies an equally unspeakable promise of a better way, which somehow can redeem the lives of those who have suffered and died, and bring meaning to an activity which is intrinsically is without it. Without this Hope perhaps there would be no war; yet there could certainly be no lasting peace as well -- for in time the innocent would once more fall victim to the wicked, and avarice displace the role of compassion in our lives. This skeptical hope born of suffering and sacrifice is the most critical lesson of Armistice Day. It is a lesson we simply cannot afford to forget if we truly wish to create a safer and more peaceful world.
posted by The Eclectic Cleric at 2:11 PM
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