• The Daily Telegraph
• Le Figaro
• The New York Post
• L’Orient-Le Jour
• L'Osservatore Romano
• The Irish Times
• Conservative Home
• The Jewish Chronicle

• FAZ / Eng.
• NZZ / Eng.
• Magyar Nemzet
• ABC.es
• The Catholic Herald
• Il Foglio
• London Playbook
• Financial Times

France

Mitteleuropa

Knickerbockers

Argentina

The Levant

Africa

Cape of Good Hope

Netherlands

Scandinavia

Québec

India

Muscovy

Germany

Strange as it may seem, Remembrance Day is perhaps my favorite time in the entire British year. It is somewhat surprising that despite the cultural revolution of the past few decades, despite the intellectual, academic, and political assaults on tradition, history, the military, and the time-honoured institutions of this realm, Remembrance Day remains and is widely commemorated. Three times this Remembrancetide I had the opportunity to partake in the annual two minutes silence: first, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month (Remembrance Day itself), then the following evening while watching the unbeatable Festival of Remembrance at the Royal Albert Hall on television, then the following morning at the Remembrance Sunday chapel service, which was followed by the joint service of town and gown at the War Memorial.

It is my firm belief that you can discern a great deal about a country from its ceremonial culture. From the naked paganism of Nazi Germany and the Stalinist banality of Soviet Russia to the splendid majesty of Great Britain and the restrained republicanism of the United States, rituals are not empty acts, but are indeed indicative of an inner soul, an essence.

Most of our readers will not be familiar with the workings of Remembrance Day in Britain. The climax to a typical Act of Remembrance is the two minutes of silence in remembrance of and thanksgiving for the great sacrifice made during all wars. Usually, there are two particular brief epigrams of sorts read, one before and one after the two minutes of silence.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
We will remember them.

When You Go Home,
Tell Them Of Us And Say,
For Their Tomorrow,
We Gave Our Today.

The two minutes of silence is one of the few remnants of dignity in this land. Two minutes in which the entire nation comes to a halt. Railway stations, public streets, shops, offices, even the busy stock exchange come to a complete halt as we stand, silently, to remember uncountable deeds and intangible sacrifice.

America, of course, does not have the culture of Remembrance Day, but celebrates the day as Veterans Day instead. The United States was exposed to the massive slaughter of modern warfare a full fifty years before the Great War so shocked Europe. To this day, no war has claimed the lives of as many Americans as did the Civil War, which led to the creation of Memorial Day. One of the many blessings bestowed upon our country is that we have never had to suffer on such a great scale in our own homeland again, while Europe has witnessed warfare as recently as a few years ago in the Balkans.

The Balkans was where it all started, after all, on that fateful day in Sarajevo, June 1914. The greatest reflection I have read this Remembrance Sunday was Gerald Warner’s column printed in the latest Scotland on Sunday. It is well worth registering with scotsman.com for. Read it.

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