Armistice Centenary

[MephistophelesApprentice]

We are born from earth true sanctified by blood,
And down this century of errors,
Lived by the inundation of that flood.

We dropped the torch, surrendered and forgot,
And around us, as then,
Choke on the miasma of the rot.

Our elected fools stagger towards war,
Beneath histories grieving skies,
No better, or more learned than before.

We put dead honour in the ground,
Ploughed earth with death
Left the harvest sodden all around.

A century of growing, creeping vice,
Of lies, of theft,
Spits on and mocks their sacrifice.

This glorious, peaceful sun reveals,
As the rain on stone in cemeteries,
The shame we've left on Flanders Fields.

A century of growing, creeping vice,
Of lies, of theft,
Spits on and mocks their sacrifice.

No.

It was vice, lies and theft that sacrificed them in the first place.

At least we can say of the second half of the century – and of many people in the 1920s and 30s – that we tried to learn from the errors of those leaders 100 years ago. We tried to find ways to live peacefully and constructively with our neighbours – and had some success.

We tried to create a more equal society, so that women who were good enough to serve in factories and in war zones were good enough to vote, and to own our own money and our own bodies. To create a health service for all in a land fit for heroes. To look after the weak, the sick and the old, as well as supporting and celebrating the achievements of our citizens and our businesses, in order to make this a country worth fighting for.

Now politicians are trying to make us forget, and to stagger towards war.

But we shouldn't pretend to blame a century's worth of citizens striving to create a better country, for the self-serving greed and tub-thumping grandiosity of certain political figures across the world today.

These errors are being made by us, now.