All Things Must Pass

Maybe it's just that I'm getting old and cantankerous, but this year, more than ever, I feel like I've had the whole remembrance thing and the 90th anniversary of World War One rammed down my throat for what seems like weeks. Without intending any disrespect to those who served in the two world wars, but I really resent the seemingly interminable raking over of them. I bloody know what happened in 1914-18 and 1939-45. I know all the terrible things that happened. I know about the sacrifices. I really don't need to have it regurgitated year after year. Of course, most of it really isn't aimed at me, rather it is targeted at the 'youth of today', who have apparently committed the terrible crime of being ignorant of events which happened long before they were born. The attitude of horror directed at the young for allegedly not appreciating the significance of these wars and the vital roles they played in ensuring their freedoms is quite extraordinary. You might as well chastise them for not knowing about the Napoleonic wars, or the Crimean War, both of which played a big part in shaping the history of Europe.

Mind you, I find it hard to believe that anyone could be ignorant of the details of world wars one and two after the diet of war memoirs we've had to endure. This year, in particular, there seems to have been a real desperation to force the young to supplicate themselves at the feet of veterans and give thanks for their deliverance from tyranny. Of course, this is hardly surprising, as veterans of the first war have now dwindled to a mere handful. Consequently, it is moving out of living memory, and passing into history, as all things eventually must. History is something which is studied, coolly and objectively, without emotion. It is this which seems to frighten many people. Possibly they fear that the war will be re-evaluated and their cherished beliefs about it, derived either from personal experience or tales handed down to them by their grandfathers, will be challenged and declared wrong. But this is the way of things. However, this country really does seem to have an obsession with the two world wars, perhaps because they represented the last time that Britain was, in any sense, a world power, and seems reluctant to let them go and pass peacefully into history.

I'm of a generation that grew up with parents and other adult relative who had experienced world war two first hand. They were always reluctant to talk about the war, and when they did it was a dire warning of the evils of war. They were glad that subsequent generations grew up in an age of (relative) peace. What has disturbed me over the past few years has been an implication in the coverage of Remembrance day, that the young of today should almost be ashamed that they've never been forced to fight a war and make sacrifices. The relentless focus on the depredations of war and the sacrifice of veterans seems to be saying to young people that only war can make you worthy of the rights and freedoms they take for granted. Dangerous nonsense which ignores historical reality. World War One certainly wasn't fought to establish democracy and civil freedoms, but rather to preserve the existing social and economic order, whilst the 1939-45 war was fought (in part) to protect our existing freedoms, it didn't create them. However, by focusing upon these two wars as if they were the only defining events of the modern era is to seriously distort history and to ignore the role played by the many people who didn't fight in wars, in creating and safeguarding our current rights and freedoms. Having the good fortune to have lived in peacetime doesn't make anyone a second class citizen. But like I said, I'm just getting old and cranky.