December 09, 2003
The Small Peace in the Big War
Christmas 1914: A temporary truce is called so the British and Germans could have a game of football ("soccer" for us Americans).
[link via Arts & Letters Daily]
Maybe I'm still filled with last night's spiked eggnog and early Christmas cheer, but reading this (which I'd not heard about before) seemed to me to be evidence that underneath all the political, religious, and social conditioning we're all still people, which is a cause for some hope.
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Anyone ever see the movie A Midnight Clear? Though it's set in Christmas of '44, it's a similar story of Germans and Americans who call a temporary truce to have Christmas together. It's a fantastic reveal of human nature in war, and how utterly terrible it is, even when viewed under the most benign light. Thanks for the link.
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...how utterly terrible WAR is, I should have said. Though human nature is necessarily and indelibly tied to war (so I guess my original statement also works).
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Wasn't it in "All Quiet on the Western Front" that the writer describes hearing the enemy singing Silent Night on Christmas Eve, and how his singing made him a perfect target, but no one fired?
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Ah a post that opens up the old eternal debate about whether human nature in the end, falls down on the side of being basically good or basically evil. With that heady stuff, I think I'll go to sleep now.