The Day Peace Prevailed and Almost Ended a War - The Christmas Truce of 1914
During the Christmas of 1914, at the beginning of the Great War (WW1), a magical thing happened all across the West Front; when the soldiers from the two sides of the war stopped fighting, came out and celebrated the Christmas holiday together as friends and brothers, at peace for a short time. As Will Grigg put it, "For a tragically short time, the Spirit of the Prince of Peace drowned out the murderous demands of the State."
Most called it a Christmas miracle, but the real miracle would have been if the soldiers, having at that time realized they were truly not each other's enemies but rather pawns of their governments' war machines, had refused to fight any longer. In fact it almost happened. It could have happened. And it probably would have happened if not for commanders insisting the soldiers go back to slaughtering each other.
There were many British soldiers who refused to go back to firing on the Germans once the holiday had ended, and in some cases the commanders had to begin shooting Germans in order to provoke the sides to begin fighting each other again. As one British soldier, Murdock M. Wood, who was present on the front line during the truce later explained in front of the British Parliament: '
"I then came to the conclusion that I have held very firmly ever since, that if we had been left to ourselves there would never have been another shot fired."
I won't get into all the details of this amazing Christmas story, as I wrote an in-depth post all about it last Christmas, which you can read below if you are unfamiliar with this event and interested in hearing the full story:
I think the main take away from this story, at least for myself, is that when given the chance, men prefer peace over war. The soldiers fighting and dying during war times are most often not truly enemies with each other, and if given the chance to see the humanity in these so-called 'enemies' they are fighting, without the indoctrination of the army they would opt to not be killing and dying in war - any war. Rather, soldiers are simply pawns on the battlefield, killing and dying for the benefit of the few who profit - bankers, arms manufacturers, oil companies and political goals of various governments.
War is rarely, if ever, fought for the benefit of the people, no matter which country is doing the fighting, and no matter what the war is supposedly being fought over, though there are arguably some very few exceptions. These exceptions, however do not change the horrifying affects that war always has on those involved - the families of the victims, the soldiers who have to live with themselves after having killed their fellow humans, those who can never get the scenes of their fellow soldiers being blown apart in front of their eyes, and so on and so forth.
War is a Racket
As General Smedley Butler well explained, having lived through the horrors of the Great War himself:
War us a racket. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.
A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.
In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.
How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?
Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few -- the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.
And what is this bill?
This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations.
For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it. Now that I see the international war clouds gathering, as they are today, I must face it and speak out.
All of this could have been averted if the army commanders had simply allowed their men to do what came naturally, to continue to live in peace with each other rather than start killing each other again. Instead, the bloodiest war of the century ensued. This is the end result of the insanity of the indoctrination and dehumanization performed by the army upon its servants.
Sadly, following the end of the so-called 'war to end all wars', General Butler's warning was not heeded; and so World War 2 began, millions more were killed, families torn apart, lives and property destroyed; the same process repeated all over again; the few profiting off the blood of the many.
And it continues to this day. War is still a racket. And war is human sacrifice on the grandest of scales. The few sacrifice the lives of all those they send off to fight and to die for their wars, to satisfy their own greed or lust for power. The blood of the brave soldiers is offered up on the alters of the battlefield, sacrificed by the war racketeers to feed the hunger of the war machine, whose thirst for blood is never quenched.
May humanity one day learn the lesson of the Christmas Truce of 1914 - that peace is better than war, that as humans we both are and can function as brothers rather than enemies - and may we finally begin to heed the warning given by the good General, and realize his conclusion is an eternal truth: "War is a racket." And may we one day decide that this racket is one we are no longer willing to participate in, to feed, and to die for; and when we do, peace on earth may one day be actually become a reality.
Curated for #informationwar (by @wakeupnd)
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