Holiday
Greetings to All Friends
of
Dorchester People for Peace!
Best Wishes from
DPP to those observing the holidays – or simply enjoying the spirit of the
season. . .
And
a PEACEFUL NEW YEAR!
We have posted
these videos many times before during the Holidays. Watch them for the first
time if you haven’t seen them before; watch them again and you won’t be
disappointed.
CHRISTMAS IN THE
TRENCHES -- 1914
In December,
1914, after months of slaughter during the First World War (it was supposed to
be “The War to End all Wars”!), British and German soldiers declared an informal
and spontaneous truce. The story of their fraternization and holiday
celebration is told in detail here and here.
The event has
been immortalized in a song by folksinger John McCutcheon, which
you can hear and watch along with contemporary illustrations and a moving
introduction by the performer.
The song ends
with this stanza:
My name is Francis Tolliver, in Liverpool I
dwell
Each Christmas come since World War I, I've learned its lessons well
That the ones who call the shots won't be among the dead and lame
And on each end of the rifle we're the same.
Each Christmas come since World War I, I've learned its lessons well
That the ones who call the shots won't be among the dead and lame
And on each end of the rifle we're the same.
*
* * *
Celebrating War Over
and Over and Peace Once
From Bavaria to
New Zealand, town squares across the world are adorned with memorials to local
men “fallen” in 1914-1918, and statues and plaques honoring the war’s leading
generals can be found from Edinburgh Castle to Pershing Square in Los Angeles.
But virtually nothing similar celebrates those who served the cause of peace.
The Polish-German revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg, who argued against the
suppression of free speech both in the Kaiser’s Germany and in Soviet Russia,
spent more than two years in a German prison for her opposition to the war. The
eloquent British philosopher Bertrand Russell did six months’ time in a London
jail for the same reason. The American labor leader Eugene V. Debs, imprisoned
for urging resistance to the draft, was still in a federal penitentiary in
Atlanta in 1920, two years after the war ended, when he received nearly a
million votes as the Socialist Party candidate for president… Perhaps when the
next anniversary of the Iraq War comes around, it’s time to break with a
tradition that makes ever less sense in our world. Next time, why not have
parades to celebrate those who tried to prevent that grim, still ongoing
conflict from starting? Of course, there’s an even better way to honor and thank
veterans of the struggle for peace: don’t start more wars. More
* * *
*
VIDEO: John Lennon –
HAPPY CHRISTMAS (The War is Over)
John Lennon
(killed on December 8, 1980)
VIDEO: “All we
are saying is give peace a chance.”
***************************
Yusuf Ibrahim (aka
Cat Stevens)
VIDEO: “Peace
Train”
*
* * *
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