"In a couple of months, we'll mark the centennial of the sinking of the Lusitania, a history-bending event that will probably engage Americans not very much more than any of the other commemorations of the First World War over the past seven months. The United States lost some 115,000 soldiers in the First World War, more than in Vietnam, Korea, and all other post-1945 conflicts combined. Yet the war's impress on the American mind—once seemingly so deep and indelible—has faded. The war men once called "the Great" has receded almost beyond memory in this country that did so much to win it.
It's not so elsewhere, of course. I was in a business meeting in a Toronto office building on November 11. At 11 a.m., a buzzer sounded and the intercom announced the two-minute silence that still marks the hour of the armistice in the countries of the former British empire. The participants looked uncertainly at each other. Wasn't it kind of…hokey to stop and stand? And yet, pause and stand they did, until the intercom buzzed again.
Could such a scene occur in an American office? I doubt it. As a small, one-family corrective, my son and I have devoted his junior-year spring break to a tour of the Western front battlefield from north to south, from Ypres to Saint-Mihiel. To steal a joke from James Thurber, if this has been done before, all I can say is that we are doing it again. If we see anything interesting, I'll post it here. In the meantime, some thoughts on why the First World War looms so small in the United States…"
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Amicalement
Armand