Armistice Day

There's a lot of fuss about Singles' Day — and all the ensuing consumerist fervor – today. But 11th November marks something much more important than that: Armistice Day. The day the Great War ended in 1918.

To commemorate this day, I've provided a curated list of quotes about the First World War, depicting the terrible conflict from a few different perspectives.

Kropp on the other hand is a thinker. He proposes that a declaration of war should be a kind of popular festival with entrance-tickets and bands, like a bull fight. Then in the arena the ministers and generals of the two countries, dressed in bathing-drawers and armed with clubs, can have it out on themselves. Whoever survives the country wins. That would be much simpler and more than just this arrangement, where the wrong people do the fighting.

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Bombardment, barrage, curtain-fire, mines, gas, tanks, machine-guns, hand-grenades — words, words, but they hold the horror of the world.

All Quiet on the Western Front (1929), Erich Maria Remarque.

If nothing else works, a total pig-headed unwillingness to look facts in the face will see us through.

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We've been sitting here since Christmas 1914, during which time millions of men have died, and we've moved no further than an asthmatic ant with heavy shopping.

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Doing precisely what we've done 18 times before is the last thing they'll expect us to do this time.

Blackadder Goes Forth (1989), BBC.