Today's WWI Events in London, Paris Around The World, Macron Speech

[appalachiablue]

Last edited Mon Nov 12, 2018, 04:32 PM - Edit history (1)

London, the royal family and UK leaders gather to mark the Armistice centenary.

Paris, 'Old demons are resurfacing,' warns Macron as world leaders gather.

Read More, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/11/armistice-day-people-gather-around-world-mark-centenary

The Guardian. If the British empire’s dead of the first world war had marched four abreast down Whitehall, the founder of the Imperial War Graves Commission, Sir Fabian Ware, observed some years afterwards, it would have taken them three and a half days, walking day and night, to pass the Cenotaph.

On Sunday, a century after the first world war was finally brought to an end, the Queen, Britain’s political and military leaders and tens of thousands of veterans and members of the public gathered once again in central London to pay their respects to them and the war’s many millions of other casualties, the vast scale of its waste no easier to comprehend now than it was at its conclusion. At the stroke of 11am, the time the armistice signed by the allied powers and Germany came into effect a century earlier, the dense crowds packed into Whitehall fell absolutely still to observe the two minutes’ silence.

Prince Charles then laid a wreath on the Cenotaph steps on behalf of the Queen, who at 92, was watching from a nearby balcony. He was followed by the German president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the first time a representative of Britain’s former foe had taken part in the national service of remembrance..

In pouring rain, most heads of state arrived in coaches driven up the Champs Élysées from the presidential palace. They then walked slowly together in a snaking line under black umbrellas to the Arc de Triomphe, Merkel beside Macron, Justin Trudeau next to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The image of leaders walking together through the rain was described by French commentators as a moving gesture of peace, but there were two notable absentees, both Trump and Putin arriving separately with their own security details.

Macron’s speech, in turn, was pointedly political, warning that “old demons” were resurfacing that threatened the fragile peace and highlighting the dangers of countries putting their own national interests first. Patriotism, he said, “is the exact opposite of nationalism. Nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism. In saying, ‘our interests first, whatever happens to the others’ you erase the most precious thing a nation can have, that which makes it live, that which causes it to be great and that which is most important: its moral values.”

Trump, who said recently he was proud to be a nationalist, looked on without visible reaction.

Theresa May was absent from the French commemorations. The prime minister opted to send Cabinet Office minister, David Lidington, to Paris, as she stayed in London to lay a wreath at the Cenotaph as usual alongside the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, and other political and military leaders and senior royals. - More at the Link above.

French President Emmanuel Macron's Armistice Centennial speech (en francais).

Paris Peace Forum vows ‘fightback’ against nationalist, authoritarian surge
https://www.france24.com/en/20181111-paris-peace-forum-far-right-nationalism-authoritarian-surge-fight-back-macron-merkel-trump

France24. After marking the 100th anniversary of the end of the Great War in a show of unity on Sunday, world leaders gathered in the French capital to hear impassioned pleas for global cooperation at a “Peace Forum” shunned by US President Donald Trump.

During Emmanuel Macron’s weeklong pilgrimage of Great War landmarks, a carefully choreographed prelude to Sunday’s Armistice Day commemorations, the French presidency arranged for students to read out letters, poems and quotes from protagonists of the gruesome conflict. In the martyred village of Eparges, a pupil recited an oft-quoted line by France’s wartime leader Georges Clemenceau. “It is easier to make war than peace,” an aging Clemenceau observed on the battlefield of Verdun, months after guns had fallen silent on the Western Front. It could have been a motto for the Paris Peace Forum that opened in the French capital on Sunday - a catchier one perhaps than the somewhat drab “Peace is linked with global governance” adopted by the organisers.

As one of the key Allied victors who made a hatchet job of negotiating a peaceful settlement after 1918, Clemenceau knew all about the difficulties of making peace. Largely because of the flaws of the 1919 Versailles Treaty, Europe would be back at war just two decades later, torn apart by resentment, national rivalry and authoritarianism. Macron, who has cast himself as the champion of a liberal and cohesive Europe, believes those forces are once again threatening the continent and the wider world. In the words of its organisers, the Paris Forum is part of the “fightback” against the tide of authoritarian nationalism surging from Brasilia to Manilla. More at the Link above.