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Veterans Day's peaceful roots have largely been forgotten

Livingston County News - 11/16/2017

In most countries, November 11 is not Veterans Day, its Armistice Day or Remembrance Day. In the United States, it was Armistice Day from 1919 until 1954 when it was renamed Veteran's Day.

Congress passed the Armistice Day resolution to celebrate the end of the "war to end all wars" calling for "exercises designed to perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding ... inviting the people of the United States to observe the day in schools and churches with appropriate ceremonies of friendly relations with all other peoples." Later, Congress added that November 11th be "a day dedicated to the cause of world peace."

The 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, fighting ended in WWI. Twenty million soldiers had been wounded and nine million killed. In addition, seven million civilians (kids, women, babies, old people, etc.) had been killed. Never before had people witnessed such slaughter, almost everyone in the United States was sick of it and wanted to see no more of war ever again. The only country eager for more war by the 1930s was Germany in order to avenge their loss in WWI.

"It is no exaggeration to say that where there had been relatively few peace schemes before the World War," wrote Robert Ferrell, "there now were hundreds and even thousands. Peace echoed through so many sermons, speeches, and state papers that it drove itself into the consciousness of everyone. Never in world history was peace so great a desideratum, so much talked about, looked toward, and planned for, as in the decade after the 1918 Armistice."

The 1920s saw the rise of a movement to outlaw war. It united people everywhere with its proposal to criminalize war as mass murder. At the 1924 Republican ConventionPresident Coolidge promised to outlaw war when reelected.

This actually happened in 1928 with the Kellogg-Briand Pact, which banned all war. 81 nations signed that treaty, including the United States. Like the climate treaties of today, it was unenforceable since it created no laws or international court. Eleven years later that treaty was violated by World War II which slaughtered 65 million people (62% civilian) and gave the world the atomic bomb.

Following World War II, the Kellogg-Briand Pact was used to prosecute the Nazis at the Nuremberg Trials, and the large nations haven't gone to war with each other since. They've made war on lots of smaller countries, but not with each other.

So warfare is still waged by the signatories of the Kellog-Briand Pact. November 11th, a day that used to celebrate peace, now seems to celebrate war since it proposes that all our wars have been necessary to keep us safe and free.

Genesee Valley Citizens for Peace was established in 1972. For more information on the organization, go to www.gvcp.org. The preceding essay is the result of a collaboration among several GVCP members.