Armistice Day
Ninety-one years ago today, at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, the Great War ended. As ever, by refusing to commemorate today as Veterans Day, my intention is neither to insult nor to fail to honor America's veterans, merely to preserve this day as the dire warning for all Mankind it is meant to be. Lest we forget, we live, each and all of us, every day in the shadow of the War to End All Wars, and as soon as we forget this we place ourselves on the march right back to the trenches, to the gas, to a world gone mad and drowning in blood. Today is Armistice Day, Remembrance Day, lest we forget.

"God of our fathers, known of old,
Lord of our far-flung battle-line,
Beneath whose awful Hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!"
—Rudyard Kipling, excerpt from "Recessional"



“Have you news of my boy Jack?
Not this tide.
When d’you think that he’ll come back?
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

Has any one else had word of him?
Not this tide.
For what is sunk will hardly swim,
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

Oh, dear, what comfort can I find?
None this tide,
Nor any tide,
Except he did not shame his kind—
Not even with that wind blowing, and that tide.

Then hold your head up all the more,
This tide,
And every tide;
Because he was the son you bore,
And gave to that wind blowing and that tide!"
—Rudyard Kipling, "My Boy Jack"

Lest we forget.

The Rebel Black Dot Song of Armistice Day
Wilfred Owen, "The Parable of the Old Man and the Young" from The Pity of War: Songs and Poems of Wartime Suffering (T.L.A.M.)