Margie Pestorius

Forgive us our trespasses… by Nick Deane

What better day is there than Remembrance or ‘Armistice’ Day, the day the Great War ended, to express the hope that wars are no longer necessary or productive and that peace should prevail? Where else might one hope to meet others who share the view that the best way to honour the war dead is by bringing war itself to an end?

However, based on experience, I must now conclude that, in the eyes of some, expressing a wish for peace on Remembrance or ‘Armistice’ Day is tantamount to criminal.

Last year (on November 11^th, 2017) members of Marrickville Peace Group (MPG) displayed a banner reading “Honour the War Dead by Ending War!” at the Cenotaph. Expressing such a sentiment was severely frowned upon by those within or close to Australia’s military community who were at the ceremony. What was considered a slogan of sound, common sense clearly did not resonate with them. I was told that I was a coward, a disgrace to my country, a despicable human being and a traitor who should be ashamed of himself. Needless to say, I am not ashamed of myself. It is extraordinary that seeking a peaceful world created such strong (almost violent) animosity in response.

For sure, there is a certain segment of the community who glorify war and subscribe to poet Wilfred Owen’s “Old Lie” – Dulce at decorum est, pro patria mori (It is sweet and proper to die for one’s country). This segment would welcome the perpetuation of war. However, theirs is not the only way to remember and honour the fallen. There are better ways to do so.

This year, the centenary of the Armistice of 1918, the ceremony was held at the War Memorial in Hyde Park. Members of MPG had agreed that their banner of the previous year might have been ‘out of step’ with the tone of the event. However, we still felt the need to display how we choose to honour the war dead, so we carried small placards, hung around our necks, bearing the same slogan – “Honour the War Dead by Ending War! We handed out 500 flyers with a message of peace.

After the previous year’s experience we had anticipated encountering some objection to what we were doing and what we stand for. As expected, we were admonished to do what we were doing elsewhere. However, we stuck to our plan and held our ground.

Members of MPG are individually of strong character, but at this event we were a small and scattered group – a very small part of a very large crowd. In trying to make contact with others in our group, I moved from the Western to the Eastern side of the Pool of Reflection. There I found myself separated from my colleagues. I was approached by two NSW police officers and told that I was on War Memorial Land. I took this to mean that distributing our flyers was not permitted there, and was content to comply (if somewhat reluctant). The exact boundary-line of that land was shown to me.

I gave away my remaining flyers in the crowd around the memorial, without being on ‘War Memorial Land’. I then returned and did stand on this land.

When I did so, the same two police officers came and told me that I was committing trespass. I looked at the crowd around me in disbelief. Out of the entire crowd of thousands, it was myself alone who was a ‘trespasser’. I do not remember all the details of the conversation I had with the officers, but I do recall being told that the War Memorial authorities had indicated that I, and I alone, was a trespasser – and that what I had been doing was ‘upsetting some people’. There was no point in my arguing that advocating peace on an occasion like Armistice Day should cause upset to no-one other that those who find violence preferable to peace. Nor did I understand how I could be a ‘trespasser’, when countless thousands in the same place as me were not. I was told to take two steps back, to put myself the other side the ‘boundary-line’ – but the ridiculous nature of that instruction made me decide to put it to the test. Would I really be arrested for trespass, aged 71, in a white shirt, wearing my veteran father’s regimental tie, with a placard around my neck bearing the words “Honour the War Dead”, on Remembrance Day? Would I really be dragged off for this ‘crime’? I decided to stand my ground and not step back.

For an elderly person, there is something extremely undignified about being hauled out of a crowd by two burly blokes in blue, one grasping each arm. I did not enjoy the experience at all – nor did I deserve the humiliation I felt.

Once outside the Hyde Park precincts, there was a change. I was not to be charged with trespass, instead I was asked to comply with a police directive not to enter Hyde Park for six hours. I agreed to this. I had had enough. I could see no point in taking the matter further. Had they stuck to the original plan of charging me with trespass, it might have made for an amusing time in Court. As it was, the police had done what was intended (at whose behest, one might wonder?) and got me, evidently a source of embarrassment to some influential party, off the premises and out of sight. ‘Authority’ had prevailed. From ‘their’ point of view my removal was an objective achieved.

I know that I committed no crime. I know that I was actively prevented from honouring the war dead in the way my colleagues and I choose to do that. I am utterly perplexed that ‘the authorities’ felt the need to criminalise giving expression to the idea of peace.

If ‘they’ had sufficient sense, they could incorporate proponents of peace into the event. They might, for example, invite a representative of the peace movement to lay a wreath. Is there no space in the ceremony for those who honour and respect the fallen, who also advocate stopping the senseless slaughter of warfare? If there is not, then Remembrance Day plays into the hands of those who would describe it as nothing more than a celebration of war-making.

My individual experience is of no consequence, but the implications behind it are. I was removed because of what I was doing. What I was doing was expressing the view that the best way to honour the war dead is by ending war. It is an extremely simple and logical proposition. Yet, through some perversion of rational thought, this proposition comes under deep suspicion from Australia’s military establishment. Judging by the response, it must be seriously threatening. So entrenched is the idea of war that one could be forgiven for feeling that there is actual fear of an outbreak of peace. As things stand, the establishment tolerates no visible expression of the need for peace and will countenance no discussion of anything other than war.

Following my 2017 experience I attempted to engage the RSL (guardians of the Cenotaph) in discussion. My position was not taken seriously, in that I received no direct response to my question of whether or not it is appropriate to advocate peace on Armistice Day. I seriously doubt that the War Memorial will enter into any dialogue about the matter, either.

So far from talking about peace, the military establishment will not even discuss talking about it.

New Hampshire Council of Churches:

November 11: Ring church bells for Armistice Day 100th Anniversary

November 18 is the 100th anniversary of Armistice Day. Will your church commemorate this anniversary by (1) ringing your church bell 11 times, (2) reading the bold statement below or another one like it and (3) hold a moment of silence to hear “the voice of God” (Kurt Vonnegut)?

Read More… 

The Telegraph UK:

White poppy sales soar, as MP criticises ‘disingenuous’ trend

Sales of controversial white poppies have soared, new figures reveal, as an MP has criticised the “disingenuous” trend for appropriating the traditional poppy symbol.

The Peace Pledge Union (PPU), who make and produce the white poppy, have seen a 30 per cent increase in the number being sold compared to this time last year.

Read More…

Johnmenadue.com Douglas Newton:

What are the real lessons of the First World War?

The Centenary of the Armistice of 1918 is almost upon us. There will be sincere and solemn events. But prepare also for a hurricane of media puffery, a cascade of clichés, narrow nationalism, the familiar medley of cheers and tears – and little serious attention to the real lessons of the First World War. 

Read More…

The Guardian: First Dog on the Moon

Voters aren’t buying Scott Morrison’s fauxblokey shtick. What to do?

Michael Messner, University of Southern California – Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

If President Donald Trump had his way, the nation would be celebrating the centennial of the World War I armistice on Nov. 11 with a massive military parade in Washington, D.C.

But that won’t be happening. When the Pentagon announced the president’s decision to cancel the parade, they blamed local politicians for driving up the cost of the proposed event.

There may have been other reasons.

Veterans were especially outspoken in their opposition. Retired generals and admirals feared such a demonstration would embarrass the U.S., placing the nation in the company of small-time authoritarian regimes that regularly parade their tanks and missiles as demonstrations of their military might. And some veterans’ organizations opposed the parade because they saw it as a celebration of militarism and war.

Veterans of past wars, as I document in my book “Guys Like Me: Five Wars, Five Veterans for Peace” have long been at the forefront of peace advocacy in the United States.

Politicians’ betrayal?

Over the past year, the advocacy group Veterans for Peace joined a coalition of 187 organizations that sought to “Stop the Military Parade; Reclaim Armistice Day.” There is a deep history to veterans’ peace advocacy.

As a young boy, I got my first hint of veterans’ aversion to war from my grandfather, a World War I Army veteran. Just the mention of Veterans Day could trigger a burst of anger that “the damned politicians” had betrayed veterans of “The Great War.”

In 1954 Armistice Day was renamed as Veterans Day. In previous years, citizens in the U.S. and around the world celebrated the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918 not simply as the moment that war ended, but also as the dawning of a lasting peace.

“They told us it was ‘The War to End All Wars,’” my grandfather said to me. “And we believed that.”

Veterans for peace

What my grandfather spoke about so forcefully was not an idle dream. In fact, a mass movement for peace had pressed the U.S. government, in 1928, to sign the Kellogg-Briand Pact, an international “Treaty for the Renunciation of War,” sponsored by the United States and France and subsequently signed by most of the nations of the world.

A State Department historian described the agreement this way: “In the final version of the pact, they agreed upon two clauses: the first outlawed war as an instrument of national policy and the second called upon signatories to settle their disputes by peaceful means.”

The pact did not end war, of course. Within a decade, another global war would erupt. But at the time, the pact articulated the sentiments of ordinary citizens, including World War I veterans and organizations like the Veterans of Foreign Wars, who during the late 1930s opposed U.S. entry into the deepening European conflicts.

In 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the law changing the name of the holiday to Veterans Day, to include veterans of World War II and Korea.

For my grandfather, the name change symbolically punctuated the repudiation of the dream of lasting peace. Hope evaporated, replaced with the ugly reality that politicians would continue to find reasons to send American boys – “guys like me,” as he put it – to fight and die in wars.

World War I, like subsequent wars, incubated a generation of veterans committed to preventing such future horrors for their sons.

From working-class army combat veterans like my grandfather to retired generals like Smedley Butler – who wrote and delivered public speeches arguing that “war is a racket,” benefiting only the economic interests of ruling-class industrialists – World War I veterans spoke out to prevent future wars. And veterans of subsequent wars continue speaking out today.

There have been six U.S. presidents since my grandfather’s death in early 1981 – Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump – and each committed U.S. military forces to overt or covert wars around the world.

Most of these wars, large or small, have been met with opposition from veterans’ peace groups. In the 1960s and early 1970s, Vietnam Veterans Against the War was a powerful force in the popular opposition to the American war in Vietnam. And Veterans for Peace, along with About Face: Veterans Against the War remain outspoken against America’s militarism and participation in wars in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Were he alive today, I believe my grandfather would surely express indignation that American leaders continue to send the young to fight and die in wars throughout the world.

Still, I like to imagine my grandfather smiling had he lived to witness some of the activities that will take place this Nov. 11: Veterans for Peace joins other peace organizations in Washington, D.C. and in cities around the U.S. and the world, marching behind banners that read “Observe Armistice Day, Wage Peace!”

Michael Messner, Professor of Sociology and Gender Studies, University of Southern California – Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.