NATURAL WAY
I am not one of those veterans who feels slighted because some people seem to celebrate each Veteran's Day with less and less enthusiasm.
They do not intend any disrespect. It's a normal reaction.
The really important thing about it all, and something all veterans should be aware of and be thinking about, is the obvious fact that we are raising a generation of young citizens who have little or no knowedge of our national history. Month after month we read of someone taking a survey or doing an "in-depth" - as opposed to a "shallow" study, I suppose, which some of them must be - which show, statistically, that our student population at all levels cannot give intelligent answers to many questions about the basics of our geographical locations or of our social and political history.
People do not observe Veteran's Day any more than they did with what it used to be called - "Armistice Day". That moment - 11 a.m., on the eleventh month of the year and on the eleventh day was very special to millions of Americans. That was in the 1920's, and perhaps into the edge of the '30's. That was set aside as a special day when - in memory of the signing an Armistice virtually ending World War I. Thoughful Americans paused for one, solomn minute whatever they were doing and refected on the sacrifices people had made on their behalf during "The Great War". Even then we still believed, as President Woodrow Wilson has said, it was the "war to end all wars."
In the 1930's because of increasing lines of stress and outright conflict, it became evident that such was not to be the case. World War II, in miniature sprang up in half a dozen places. Some were dress rehersals, you might call them, or field tests for new bombing techniques by air, new explosives and their proper uses, and logistical execises about the movment of large masses of mechanized fighting power. Even with such overt demonstrations by various nations "helping" one side or the other in the SpanIsh Civil War, we, here in America failed to see such warnings which some European nations seemed to understand.
We pretended such conditions did not exist, and a part of that sentiment developed because we were so intent for so long dwelling on what we thought we have accomplished by World War I . We were celebrating victory even as another war was brewing in Nazi Germany, in Fascist Italy, in Imperial Japan and a type of malaise in the hearts and minds off several other national groups. We need to see England under threats of invasion, being bomb without mercy snd France torn asunder. We asked leadership of our President Franklin D. Roosevelt and he, wisely, I feel, made a Lease-Lend plan available to the British. Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor aroused us to belated action.
Let's not dwell too much on what we have done in the past, Respect it, yes, and those who brought it about, but think tomorrow...think future...work for now....rather than dwelling on past events.
A.L.M. November 10, 2003 [c520wds]
