'The task ahead'...94 years ago
(EDITOR’S NOTE: Today is Veterans Day. In honor of that holiday, we are running an editorial that celebrated Armistice Day, the day World War I ended on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. Armistice Day was celebrated for many years to mark our war victory, but eventually became known as Veterans Day to honor all of those in the military who have served to keep our nation free. This editorial provides perspective on how much has changed since 1918 — and how much remains the same!)
The Daily Inter Lake
(Reprinted from Nov. 11, 1918)
In the winning of this greatest of victories, the American people have played an important part. In just 115 days after a division of “leather necks” — which is another name for the marines — stopped the Huns at the Marne, the greatest fighting machine which was ever builded up has been compelled to lay down its arms and accept an ignominious defeat.
However, a great task remains to Americans in rehabilitating the devastated country, building homes, feeding the starved out nations and putting them in a position to become self-supporting once more.
As the president has wisely said in his proclamation, “it will now be our duty to assist by example, by sober, friendly counsel and by material aid in the establishment of a just democracy throughout the world.”
If the people of the war stricken countries of Europe were to be left to work out their own salvation it would be but a poor recommendation for a democratic form of government. It now remains for us to show the meaning of a “government of the people, for the people and by the people,” and in the meantime it is probable that we will not become entirely unfamiliar with the despised “substitutes” for real American grub. But we can and will gladly make all necessary sacrifices.
Four years ago Iast August the forces were turned loose which set the peoples of nearly all the nations at each other’s throats. Today the entire world is celebrating, and even in the streets of Berlin the populace paraded the streets singing the Marseillaise — the national song of republican France.
Four years ago none of these people had any grievance against each other. Whatever there was of class hatred had been carefully nursed by propaganda which the rulers had used as a method of bringing about the proper war spirit whenever it pleased them to bring about hostilities.
If there is any occasion for rejoicing today it is in the downfall of the greatest criminal in all history, the former German kaiser, who, with his sons, brought about the greatest catastrophe in the history of the world, merely to satisfy their personal ambitions.
They had dreams of world conquest, but they have awakened to find themselves outcasts and autocracy discredited in the world.
Had the matter been left to the decision of the people of Germany, Austria, Serbia and Russia, and had they been conversant with all the facts, there would have been no war. There was no occasion for It.
The cost of the war cannot be counted. Thousands upon thousand of lives have been lost and homes desolated, but the cost will not be too great if it brings the assurance that hereafter no monarch can at his bidding produce another such calamity.