I am of two minds about today's Remembrance Day, for on the one hand I think it is suitable that we make a fuss over the few veterans that remain while pausing to remember those no longer with us, but on the other hand there is the pain of it all. It is without a doubt the saddest day of the calendar, and that is as it should be.
When I was a sprout of a boy, there were many First World War vets extant, with several performing as my teachers in the late 1940s at my boarding school.
If one dropped a book or something heavy the old soldiers would hit the ground in fright from what was then called shellshock.
Many of us did it for fun just to see some old guy fling himself under a desk. I am ashamed of myself for that now.
All of them had sustained lung problems because of multiple gassings, making their strangled breathing sound not unlike the rattle of wind through loose blinds.
They were wonderful characters and superb teachers but with terrible melancholia, including the sloping shoulders of the poignant. They are all gone now, combatants in the uselessly named "War to End All Wars."
Today, we lose 2,000 veterans a month from that other bloody conflict, the Second World War. My mind is a jumble of thoughts as to whether we have learned anything from the 20th century's vast killing ground - for instance, racism doesn't work.
Imagine if Hitler had not had a psychopathic hatred for Jews, especially the German variety. Think of the thousands of scientists and professors who would not have left the Fatherland, not to mention manufacturers and inventors. Many German Jews went to their deaths wearing medals from the First World War, loyal countrymen to the end. Also if that madman had not enslaved the Ukrainians who greeted the SS as their liberators from the dreaded Stalin, how many volunteers for the German army would he have had? Instead, the whole of western Russia became a partisan recruitment centre and a graveyard for millions.
In the case of Tojo and the Japanese, I wonder what the subcontinent and India in particularly would have provided for that island race, perhaps 100 brigades of enthusiastic volunteers to throw out the British. Instead of murdering 20 million Manchurians, maybe they could have put them to better use than slave labour, tying up one million Japanese soldiers acting as guards.
The Philippines looked forward to freedom from their American occupier only to see their dreams dashed by the brutality of the Japanese empire, leaving that fool McArthur to return in triumph a few years later. At the end, most countries would have surrendered after the first atomic bomb but not them, as it took two, thus confirming Truman's decision to demonstrate his power rather than an invasion of Japan itself, which was estimated to cost a million causalities to the Allies, mostly Americans.
Not only is racism abhorrent, it does not work and never has. Slaves always haunt us in the end.
Yet here we are again. After barely 67 years since six million Jews were murdered or worked to death, Israel is heralded as the problem with the world today.
Palestine has gone from the Ottoman Empire to the British Mandate and finally through an order passed by the United Nations to Israel in less than 100 years.
Now universities around the world, and I am ashamed to say even in sa国际传媒, allow interested parties to mark "Israel Apartheid Week." This is a time when all Jews attending such places of higher learning must keep their heads down to avoid sometimes physical violence. Once again, it is a case of well-educated people going along and saying nothing. Israel is far from perfect, but it is democratic and deserves better.
Let us remember all who did not return from wars but also how we must stand up to racism now.
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