by Ken Sehested
for the 100th anniversary of Armistice Day ending World War I
“You can no more win a war than win an earthquake.”
—Jeanette Rankin, first female elected to federal office (in 1916, to the US House of Representatives,
before women were allowed to vote) and dissenting voter on US declarations of war in both world wars
I used to think the symbolic wearing of red poppies in remembrance of war’s sacrificial cost was a British thing. And mostly it is, if you include other nations who belong to the Commonwealth. It was a Canadian military surgeon, one with poetic inclinations, who established what is essentially a weed’s place in literary and military history.
Papaver rhoeas, known variously as the Flanders poppy, corn poppy, red poppy and corn rose.
“In Flanders fields the poppies blow / Between the crosses, row on row, / That mark our place; and in the sky / The larks, still bravely singing, fly / Scarce heard amid the guns below. / We are the Dead. Short days ago / We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, / Loved and were loved, and now we lie, / In Flanders fields. / Take up our quarrel with the foe: / To you from failing hands we throw / The torch; be yours to hold it high. / If ye break faith with us who die / We shall not sleep, though poppies grow.” —John McCrae, “In Flanders fields”
Story has it that Lieutenant Colonial John McCrae was unhappy with his composition, written immediately after he presided over the 1915 battlefield burial of a close friend killed in the Second Battle of Ypres, Belgium; but some of his comrades retrieved the piece, which was published later that year. The story might have ended there had it not been for a literature professor at the University of Georgia, Moina Michael, who read “In Flanders Field” in the Ladies Home Journal. She was so inspired that she successfully lobbied the American Legion Auxiliary to produce and sell silk red poppies to raise funds for supporting war veterans.
At about the same time, a Frenchwoman named Anna Guérin also was championing the symbolic power of the red poppy as a cultural tradition supporting the war’s tragic memory. Eventually she convinced the Royal British Legion, whose mission was to support returning veterans, in adopting the practice. The observance in Britain took hold. [For more background, see “The World War I Origins of the Poppy as a Remembrance Symbol,” history.com]
President Trump’s recent behavior in France, citing the inconvenience of rain as reason to skip the official observance of the 100th anniversary of the ending of World War I with national leaders from around the world, is symptomatic of US relative nonchalance over the “Great War.” The cost here was minimal: some 116,000 troops killed out of the total fatality count of 10 million combatants. America was in the war for less than a year.
Or maybe the lack of public sentiment in the US is because World War I was supposed to have been, according to then Pres
ident Woodrow Wilson, the “war to end all wars” which would “make the world safe for democracy.”
Left: Photo of African American troops of the 369th Infantry, formerly the 15th Regiment New York Guard, who were among the most highly decorated upon its return home in 1918. They were also known as the Harlem Hellfighters. Getty Images.
It wasn’t, and it didn’t. In fact, the US now has special forces operations in 149 countries around the world.
In the aftermath of Veterans Day, four things are important to remember.
1. The law of unintended consequences is never more apparent than in violent conflict. World War I, begun in July 2014 between Austria-Hungary and Serbia, quickly spread to numerous other countries due to an interlocking series of alliances. The howls of purported dishonored national glory were provoked by precisely the kind of nationalist assertions made recently by US President Donald Trump.
It was all supposed to be over by Christmas. Instead, it escalated quickly. Given the imperial reach of several of the belligerent nations, soldiers from 28 different countries participated. Nations as far away from Europe as South Africa and Japan participated. And all of this started when a fervent Serbian nationalist assassinated the presumptive heir (and his wife) to the Austro-Hungarian throne.
It was unprecedented carnage. The first day alone of the Battle of the Somme resulted in over 70,000 casualties. By war's end on 11 November 1918, the final tally of vengeance for one assassination had claimed the lives of nearly 40 million combatants and civilians, many times over wounded. Add to that, eight million horses, mules, and donkeys were killed.
Furthermore, the war precipitated the Ottoman Empire’s Armenian genocide, which took the lives of another 1.5 million; and it was a significant factor in “the greatest medical holocaust in history,” the 1918 influenza outbreak, which took the lives of somewhere between 50-100 million people worldwide.
McCrae himself died of pneumonia before the war’s end, caused at least in part by battlefield conditions.
2. The Great War was the glo
be’s first industrialized war. The exuberance of humankind’s burst of scientific discovery in the late 19th century dramatically increased the capacity for mechanized killing. Machine guns, submarines, airplanes, and tanks were “force multipliers” (to use current military jargon).
Right: Stone crosses marking the World War I graves of German soldiers are overtaken by time and the growing trunk of a tree in Hooglede German Military Cemetery on August 4, 2014, in Hooglede, Belgium. Photo by Christopher Furlong, Getty.
To say nothing of the development chemical weapons—which, though not the most reliable killing apparatus, was far and away the most terrifying. Each of the major powers—France, Britain and Germany—used chemical weapons, though Germany’s use was the most significant. The US developed an even more effective chemical weapon, and sent a specialized chemical warfare unit to Europe; but the war’s end precluded their deployment.
3. In 1954, in the heat of the Cold War’s hysteria, when “God” became the mascot of the “free” world over against the “godless” communists, Armistice (or “Remembrance”) Day was repurposed as “Veterans Day.” In so doing, the work of mourning and incantations resolving never-again were displaced by the celebration of martial prowess.
“Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans’ Day is not,” declared novelist Kurt Vonnegut, a World War II veteran and prisoner of war. “So I will throw Veterans’ Day over my shoulder. Armistice Day I will keep. I don’t want to throw away any sacred things.”
When McCrae in his poem urged those who came after to “Take up our quarrel with the foe,” he had no inkling of how rapidly foes would abound.
4. Writers as far back as the Napoleonic Wars noted the sudden appearance of the red poppy on battlefields. But it was Lieutenant Colonel McCrae’s grief-inspired poem that highlighted the association.
What we now know is that in soils like that of Flanders, a thin crust of alkaline is released when the ground is disturbed, as happens with bombardment and grave digging. The soil becomes acidic, choking most growth. But poppies thrive in such war-spoiled botanical conditions.
The red poppy is not a floral triumph. Rather, it is the ground’s tear, resulting from the soil’s hemorrhage. It is a judgment lodged against the despoiling of earth’s fertility—and against all mortal “faith” requiring blood sacrifice.
“If you defile the land, it will vomit you out.”
—Leviticus 18:28
# # #
of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives….
mass destruction—brought a measure of confidence that the invasion would be further delayed. The anti-war war movement was indeed mobilizing like never before.
simultaneous commitment to the process of spiritual formation—only compound the crisis. Doing so has the effect of feeding our children to the very beast whose appetite swells with every fare. If our political vocation lacks anchorage in spiritual transformation, then we can only expect more of the same, only worse. You know what they say about computers: garbage in, garbage out.
Gentiles came on the heels of another night vision, of a “man from Macedonia pleading with him and saying, ‘Come over to Macedonia and help us’” (16:9). The tradition continues—especially in works like St. John of the Cross’s Dark Night of the Soul—up through modern poets like Rilke and Berry.
s a ramshackle structure, long since forgotten by the landlord. Her only source of heat was one small gas heater, and she spent frigid days sitting next to it, wrapped in a blanket.
religious restrictions. It wasn’t until the 1850s that property requirements were dropped. It would be well over a century before women were granted the right; and another half century still before the majority of African Americans secured the right.
than in polling stations every year. Elections are but the end result of an advocacy for the common good that starts in each watershed.” —continue reading “
outings, when no strain threatens our budget. It takes little faith to acknowledge God’s goodness when terror remains at a distance. Bring us into the presence of widows whose faith is stronger than famine. Send Elijah to accompany us to the place where hope outstrips horror.” —continue reading “
• “It is more likely that an individual will be struck by lightning than he will impersonate another voter at the polls.” —
voters, 70% of them African American, under his “exact match” policy.
hey Would Have Given Us Candidates.” —Jim Hightower book title
ay that it gets metabolized into acts of love.” —Eugene H. Peterson
¶ Just for fun. Amazing 
nothing without a demand.” Be demanding. Justice often requires the painful work of delegitimizing existing power arrangements before reconstruction can occur.
Mead said. “Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.”
photographers from behind barbed wire, / who can’t bound down the street in a new pair of sneakers, / who are born in places we wouldn’t be caught dead, who never go to the circus, who live in an X-rated world.” —continue reading Ina J. Hughes’ “
people, three languages in Haifa all singing “
have no power here / I will stand fast.” —Fred Small, “
is a cliff and if the children in the play wander too close and fall, he would be there to protect them.” —Mary Lou Kownacki, OSB, The Nonviolent Moment: Spirituality for the 21st Century
York Times 
its highest level ever, according to a report by The New York Times. Data obtained by the Times showed that 12,800 children were detained in federal custody this month, compared to 2,400 children detained in May 2017.” —
made some huge mistakes / And that’s how we now find ourselves in this tenuous place. / Teach them that hate is the poison. / Teach them that love is the remedy, / That it is better to be readied for what comes next, / Even if the revelation is painful.” —read 
School teacher asked us to read the passages from some of the New Testament letters of Paul (like Colossians 3:5). And then we asked what that word meant and suddenly the teacher’s expression looked like an 18-wheeler was headed right for us.
an 8000-year-old law of God.”
them.” (Genesis 1: 27) In the second creation story in Genesis (2:24—yes, there are two): "Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his woman; and they become one flesh." (Knust translation)
stoned to death in the town square. (Deuteronomy 22: 18-21) Many of us would not be alive today if we still obeyed that law.
lodge, I will lodge; your people will be my people, and your God my God" (Ruth 1: 16). Those beautiful words were spoken from one widow to another widow. Ruth courageously said them to Naomi as they forged a path in a treacherous and harsh world without husbands.
love right now?
controversy. It was mostly from prisoners who were dismayed about my biblical interpretation or angry because I did not use the 1611 King James version of the Bible. And of course my gender has always been a stumbling block for some of the prisoners.
compliant on matters of piety, doctrine, and relations with the state.
struck down the poor and their defenders.” —Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, at a Vatican press briefing on Feb. 4, on the eve of his beatification, quoted in 
the Truth Concerning Gross Human Rights Violations and for the Dignity of Victims’ in recognition of the role of Archbishop Romero in defence of human rights. Romero actively denounced violations of the human rights of the most vulnerable people and defended the principles of protecting lives, promoting human dignity and opposition to all forms of violence.” —“
generosity. It is right and it is duty.”
• Archbishop Oscar Romero will be canonized by the Roman Catholic Church on Sunday 14 October. Watch this short (4:17) video summary of his life. —
of pardon will arrive from every far-flung hill and hamlet. Among them will be the shamed and forsaken, the exposed and exploited; the blind and the lame and the laboring women.” —continue reading “