haiku- 100th anniversary of WW1 end

The guns fell silent

one hundred years ago, but

it didn’t end all war.

Mired in mud and blood

patriotism butchered

a generation.

If only those

recruitment posters were true

and their lives bought us peace.

Jim Stewart Says:
November 11, 2018 at 5:51 am
Patriotism was/is part of it, the quest for glory another, but old men have been sending young ones to war since the dawn of history.

Reply
Jennifer Barricklow Says:
November 12, 2018 at 7:37 am
Yesterday I went to see a production of the opera Silent Night, about the Christmas Truce of 1914. It was beautifully presented, and I don’t believe there was a dry eye in the house when the lights came up. It got me thinking about the anguished hope expressed in calling WWI “The War to End All Wars.” I wonder, though, if “The Mother of All Wars” would be a better epithet, since the roots of nearly every armed conflict since lie in the geopolitical lines drawn in its aftermath.
Thank you for the lovely haiku.

Reply
- Shawn L. Bird Says:
  November 12, 2018 at 8:37 pm
  Ah, so true for the European conflicts and the creation of the Soviet Union at the very least. Then again, WW1 had roots in earlier conflicts. If you look at the wars in Europe there were several dozen in every century back to Roman times, some with more than a million casualties. Nationalism. Power. Greed. Tragic.
  
  Reply