Lest we forget

It is 11 November. In the US, that means Veterans Day, when we honor those who have served in the armed services. In much of Europe, it’s Remembrance Day, honoring the armistice that went into effect at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, silencing the guns of the 1914-18 war.

(It wasn’t for another 30 years that people realized they’d have to start numbering wars of mass destruction.)

What we now know as the First World War was utterly catastrophic for pretty much all the nations on the European continent. It led to the collapse of the Russian empire and its replacement by a Communist government. It broke up the Astro-Hungarian empire, resulting in the creation of a dozen or more small nations with no experience in self-governance or running modern economies; the "nations" were created arbitrarily by the winning powers, without regard to cultural or ethnic composition and we're still feeling the effects. It ended the Second Reich of Germany without establishing any kind of political or economic stability. It kneecapped the British empire, sucking dry resources from all over the globe in service of the fight against the Triple Alliance. And it destroyed much of Northern France and cost the French the deaths of about 25% of its men.

Not bad for four years of fighting without benefit of real armored tactics, only rudimentary air power and no computers at all.

So it’s no surprise that this day is still serious business here in France, even 104 years after the event. (It is in Britain, too.)

French composer Gabriel Fauré wrote his Elegy for cello and piano in 1880, but its mournful themes surrounding a fiery middle make it appropriate for this occasion. Here’s cellist Harriet Krijgh playing it with the Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz orchestra.