Honor all veterans, but remember WW I

Nov. 11 is Armistice Day. Of course, we now call the holiday Veterans Day, but it was originally a day to mark the end of World War I. That horrific and ultimately indecisive conflict ended on Nov. 11, 1918.

Armistice Day first came to national attention in 1926 with the passage of a concurrent resolution by the Congress. In 1938 another resolution was passed declaring Nov. 11 a national holiday. In 1954, after World War II and the Korean War, Congress changed the name of the holiday to “Veterans Day� and Nov.11 became a day to honor all veterans.

It is good that we have a holiday to honor the service and sacrifice of our country’s armed forces veterans; however, I feel we have lost some significant meaning and opportunity for thoughtful contemplation in the evolution of the holiday.

Let’s take a look at a two phrases from those original resolutions creating the Armistice Day holiday. The original 1926 resolution stated that Nov. 11 “should be commemorated with thanksgiving and prayer and exercises designed to perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding between nations ... � The 1938 resolution creating a national holiday stated that it is “ ... a day to be dedicated to the cause of world peace.�

It is clear that the original intent was to have a day devoted to contemplation of the horrors of modern warfare and the avoidance of it in the future. How many of us devote our Veterans Day time to contemplation of “good will,� “mutual understanding� or “world peace�? Perhaps veterans of war themselves are the ones who think most about this side of the commemoration.

World War I was originally known as the Great War, until the even greater conflagration 20 years later required the adoption of a numerical nomenclature. Ultimately, it was not “The War That Will End War� as H.G. Wells had hoped. But the Great War brought about the crashing end of the era of European empires. The centuries-old Ottoman, Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires were consigned to the dustbin. The old order of alliances between hereditary monarchs was finished. Bismarck’s united Germany remained mostly intact, but for one Kaiser, and ripe for rapid rebirth under a different kind of tyrant.

The old order also collapsed in the arts and sciences. In 1905 Albert Einstein published his theory of special relativity, and followed it with the theory of general relativity in 1916. So, while ancient European empires crumbled on the battlefield, the very foundations of human perceptions of reality were being shaken.

The 200-year-old Newtonian “empire� dissolved along with the remnants of the Holy Roman Empire, and Einstein’s discoveries eventually led to the creation of the most horrific weapon the world has ever seen.

Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring� premiered in Paris in 1912. Riots ensued. The tonal system perfected and sustained by Newton’s contemporary, J.S. Bach, was also under withering attack.

It was a short leap from the Stravinsky’s “Riteâ€� to the revolutionary system of atonality; music composed with no tonal center. The young Alban Berg began composition of his atonal opera “Wozzeckâ€� while serving in the Austrian army in 1915.  The “centerâ€� had disappeared in affairs of state and physics, so perhaps it is only natural for it to disappear in music as well.

Also, by the outbreak of war in 1914 Picasso was introducing Cubism to Parisian art lovers, and centuries of representational art was going the way of tonality and Newton.

It was perhaps inevitable that the revolutions in art and music weren’t total. In 1909 Richard Strauss dipped his toe into the atonality pool with his opera, “Elektra.� He found the water a bit chilly. His astonishingly beautiful and lyrical “Der Rosenkavalier� premiered a mere two years layer, and his subsequent works, while “modern,� remained firmly in the tonal camp.

Modern art splintered into multiple “isms� and old fashioned notions of representation flourished in many of them.

Similarly, European statesmen tried to keep the old order going. By the time Armistice Day became officially recognized in this country it was too late; the time for “good will� and “mutual understanding� was at Versailles in 1919. The absence of hereditary rulers created a vacuum to be filled by nationalist and ideological tyrants.

The fragmentation of Austria-Hungary gave the former Austrian corporal named Adolf Hitler a grab bag of grievances to sell to the impoverished citizens of his adopted country. Joseph Stalin invaded Finland and partnered with Hitler to carve up Poland in an effort to restore czarist boundaries. The game of empire building went on as before, only the names changed.

Monte Stone is a musician and music historian who lives in Lakeville.

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