Why I Prefer The Old Title Of "Armistice Day"

"The ceremony of innocence is drowned...."

"The blood swept lands and seas of red...."

Kurt Vonnegut, b. November 11, 1922, d. April 11, 2007.

I will come to a time in my backwards trip when November eleventh, accidentally my birthday, was a sacred day called Armistice Day. When I was a boy, and when Dwayne Hoover was a boy, all the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind.

"The sudden silence was the Voice of God."

 Precisely so. It should always be remembered that way.  Only people start wars.  Only people stop wars.  Aside from Twain's observation that man is the only animal that blushes; or needs to; the distinction of being warriors is also ours alone.

And we never remember what it costs.