Remembrance Sunday 2018 St Paul’s Athens
Revd. Canon Leonard Doolan
In a railway carriage that belonged to Marshal Ferdinand Foch, Supreme commander of the Allied forces, in the Forest of Compiegne in France the Armistice agreement was signed. The senior British representative was Sir Rosslyn Wemyss.
After millions of deaths, on all sides of this so called ‘war to end all wars’, it was signed at 11.00hrs, on the 11th day of the 11th month. It is a poignant moment, and it is right that this occasion should be so solemnly marked in so many parts of the world, not least in the United Kingdom, the Commonwealth, and right here where we are.
Hostilities may have ceased at that historic moment, but we know that it was not the war to end all wars. There may have been a naivete among those who claimed it, however the aspiration that there should be no more human carnage on this scale is entirely understandable. How can we make any sense out of the mass slaughter of European, African, antipodean lives on European soil, fighting European battles?
11.11.11 may have ended hostilities, but the impact of this Great War of 1914-1918 did not end there, and realism dictates that we take note of this.
I take us to Cameroon. This is a country I have been to 5 or 6 times, and I am a Canon of the cathedral in Douala, the commercial capitol of Cameroon.
Cameroon was a German colony. At the end of the Great War, as part of the programme of ‘reparations’ this country, like a household possession of Germany, was handed over to the French and the British. There were then 2 Cameroons – one English speaking the other Francophone. In 1968 these two possessions were given independence. Much of the British Cameroon opted to become part of Nigeria, also English speaking, but 2 regions of Anglophones remained in the new republic. Tensions have recently been growing, emerging into violence, largely based on language prejudices, and only a week ago 79 school boys were kidnapped from a Presbyterian school in Bamenda, a town I have visited many times, in the English speaking North West region. Mercifully they were released 2 days later.
If you follow the thread of history, these current events in Cameroon are not disconnected from the Great War, and the chaos that it created in Europe and well beyond this continent.
The Great War left its lasting mark on the disintegrating Ottoman Empire also, claiming the lives of countless people, with conflicts in this part of the world lasting well into the 1920’s with massive migration of peoples as a result. In 1923 Greece received 1.3million Greek refugees from parts of Asia Minor where there was persecution and exile. Atrocities were perpetrated on all sides of course. Alliances both to Germany on the part of the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria, and Greece on the side of the 4 Great Powers, created major conflicts in the Balkan region for years after 11.11.11. Promises made to win loyalties quickly became promises broken.
In the area Western Europeans call the Middle East the French and the British divided up regions of essentially nomadic peoples and gave artificial boundaries and names. It was in 1916 that the Sykes-Picot line was drawn right through this area – the pressure was on to get the oil reserves to fuel the war effort. I would suggest from contemporary events that the west is now reaping the cost of what was done in the Great War.
So much continues to affect the world in our own time that can be shown to be a direct impact from the First World War, so rightly it is called the Great War, for it has had and still has great global implications.
11.11.11 should most definitely be marked in a solemn way, and even if it is taking humanity a while to learn from it, learn from it we should. We must honour the dead – but their deaths must not be in vain.
Which is the nobler alchemy? To take more human lives on one side than the enemy inflicts? Which is the nobler alchemy? To develop drone warfare at a rate faster than the enemy can? OR is the nobler alchemy to transform swords into ploughshares? Which is the nobler alchemy? To create what the ancient Romans would call ‘peace’ when in fact they have created a desert? OR is the nobler alchemy to transform spears into pruning hooks? (Isaiah 2,4).
That great vision of the prophet Isaiah should surely always be the priority, even in the midst of human failure, weakness and violence. All power to those politicians, diplomats, and skilled military leaders, and ordinary women and men in society who are committed to ploughshares for the flourishing and common good of humanity.
As we leave from this poignant service this morning, and as some of us like so many hundreds of thousands of people worldwide, gather at War Graves to recognize the courage and sacrifice of so many millions, we should do so with the words of the risen Christ burning deep within us,
“Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you” (Jn 19,21). He sends us out to be people of peace. Peace be with you.
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