Make November 11 Armistice Day Again: A Modest Proposal

“I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind. Armistice Day has become Veterans’ Day. Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans’ Day is not.”

– Kurt Vonnegut (Breakfast of Champions, 1973)

On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the Year of Our Lord 1918, Western civilization fooled itself into thinking The Great War was over. British, French, and German officials signed the armistice that would silence the guns for all time, at least the ones that fired on other Europeans.

The new industrial society of mass production and mass mechanization had survived its encounter with modern war, but, many thought, just barely. Four years earlier, not even the architects of the war could have possibly imagined the destruction made possible by new technology, combined arms, and the mass conscription of tens of millions of men.

Not even the most pessimistic voices could have possibly predicted that Europe, Anatolia, and Persia would bury 10 million of their sons – or that another 10 million or more innocent civilians would share in the price.

It’s hard to imagine now, but the Armistice brought neither peace or relief, at least here in America. Unlike the sequel war, which became America’s third creation myth and informs every aspect of our national (and international) life to this day, Americans were fucking pissed.

Why were American boys sent halfway around the world to shoot at German boys? What was the war even about? What were the stakes? What business was it of ours? What was so important that it required a temporary dictatorship that stripped Americans of their constitutional rights?

Americans once knew a rip-off when they saw it. They did not believe the lives of their sons were fodder for utopian schemes, or “Democracy.” That attitude led the Senate to reject both Versailles and the League of Nations, and voters to overwhelmingly turn over the White House to President Warren G Harding’s “normalcy.”

Anger was so palpable for so long, Congress eventually established the Nye Committee, officially the Special Committee on Investigation of the Munitions Industry, to investigate the role that war profiteering, banking, and politics played in America’s involvement.

Consider: Until December 7, 1941, the American people had roundly rejected President Franklin Roosevelt’s years-long efforts to drag the United States into WWII. (As Clausewitz pointed out, “War never breaks out wholly unexpectedly, nor can it be spread instantaneously.” There is no such thing in our age of mass mobilization as “surprise” war.)

All this is to say, symbols and words and their meanings are incredibly important, and powerful. Armistice Day was a direct, unambiguous message: War for adventure and profit were inarguably bad. The end of war, the bloodiest in world history, was inarguably good. Peace should be celebrated, and the default, and the goal and aim—at least in terms of the nomos of Western civilization/Christendom.

The politicians, of course, were not ignorant of the importance of Armistice Day. Britain changed Armistice Day to Remembrance Day in 1946. America followed suit in 1954, changing Armistice Day to Veterans Day.

Of course, America’s veterans should be celebrated, and with a holiday. A society that does not honor its guardians will not last long in this world.

But why replace a symbol of ending war? Well, that answers itself, doesn’t it? At least for the Anglo countries, war was to be celebrated, not lamented. The Great Crusade of WWII, if it was to form the basis of all that followed, could not be looked at in any other light than as a religious crusade.

And so Armistice Day had to go. It’s very easy to understand for everyone who has lived through the War on Terror era, with its 20-year-long wars and the over-the-top jingoism required to stave off revolt.

We can easily fix the situation. America needs more federal holidays. In fact, I propose that in return for reviving Armistice Day to its proper place, we can add two Veterans Days… say in spring and fall.

Regardless, as a nation, we should cast our memories back to Armistice Day, what it meant, and the fact that it was changed.

As Goethe’s Poet related in Faust:

“What dazzles is a momentary act;
What’s true is left for posterity, intact.”

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.

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.

– John McCrae (In Flanders Fields, 1915)