Glass Half Empty

This is the day we remember the fallen, those who died in war, fighting for their country, or for what they believed was right. On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, the first World War ended, and we all hoped never to see its like again.

Anything I write here is unlikely to express my people's thoughts, my thoughts, on the matter. Twenty MILLION dead in the first World War, because of outdated and poorly-conceived tactics, poor equipment, poor communications. We didn't learn much. The losing side was all but destroyed, and what remained was hobbled with crippling sanctions by the winner. Twenty-one years later, the remains of the losing side began it all again, likely at least partially driven by the effects of the sanctions they were under. The second World War killed seventy million people, roughly.

Almost 100 million people*. That's twice the population of the UK. So many fallen. Some, granted, were on the "wrong" side. Few of those killed, I suspect, truly believed the ideologies driving the conflict.

I'm not a student of history, and I don't claim to understand the social, political and economic forces that drive a nation to war. I certainly don't understand the wrongness of mind that causes a man at the head of a nation to decide that certain of his countrymen are somehow inferior, and should be driven out or killed. All I can do is look at the statistics, and the photographs, and the stories and promise that I, like all of us, will do my utmost to make sure this never happens again.

*(I don't mean to belittle later conflicts, or those lost in them, but I think the World Wars are the iconic image, as it was their ending that caused us to begin "celebrating" Armistice Day.)

The Glass: half-and-half, and hopeful | NaBloPoMo: 11/30