Orson Byron Lowell 1918
Today is Veterans Day. The day when we honor all those who fought for our country during its many wars. In the beginning it was called Armistice Day, celebrating the end of World War I, The War to End All Wars. Since then there have been numerous wars, small and world-wide. It has become an addiction, preparing for and waging war, followed by rebuilding and preparing for another.
At first, Armistice Day honored the generation of young men who disappeared into the smoke and fire of the first modern battlefield. Now we honor all those who have disappeared since then.
The Armistice started on the 11th hour, of the 11thd day, of the 11th month of 1918. In reality, it began at 5 a.m. with the signing of the Armistice. But there was a 6-hour delay to allow orders to reach both sides before implementation. The fighting and killing did not stop until 11 am. During that time 3,000 soldiers died, 320 of them American. The last official death of World War 1 was an American soldier, Private Henry Gunther who, after being ordered to stand down, committed suicide by charging a German machinegun position. Both his friends and the Germans yelled at him to stop, but in the end, as an act of self-defense, the Germans opened fire, killing Gunther. It was 10:59 a.m. The war ended 1 minute later.
The war ended as it had started, with acts of courage and insanity. The war killed 9,000,000 soldiers and wounded 21,000,000 more. Five million civilians died due to disease, exposure, and starvation.
The Armistice was a temporary agreement which expired and was renewed several times before the combatants reached a final agreement in 1919, the Treaty of Versailles. The treaty, with its punitive treatment of Germany, set the stage for World War II just 20 years later.
It need not have been that way. President Woodrow Wilson argued against the treaty’s harsh penalties levied on Germany. He understood that it would create a deep resentment in the German people. The United States and our allies had learned that lesson and at the end of WW II the Marshall Plan was implemented to feed the people of Europe and help rebuild their shattered nations, including the Axis nations of Germany, Italy, and Japan. Nations that are now our staunchest allies.
Today, we live in a world cluttered with Armistices. Korea is divided by a temporary cessation of war between North Korea with its allies China and Russia against South Korea and its allies, the United States, and the United Nations.
China and the Republic of Taiwan have a fragile stalemate that is currently heating up. The democratic government and its forces led by General Chang Kai-shek were driven from mainland China by the Communist forces led by Mao Zedong. Since then the Chinese Communist Party has continuously planned and threatened to attack the island republic.
The Mid-East can be considered a failed Armistice, created after World War I. The western powers arbitrarily divided the region into nations whose borders intentionally ignored historic cultures. They fragmented ethnic groups which allowed the western nations to pit these groups against each other and control the region’s wealth.
In the United States, I believe, we are paying the price for the Union’s failed Civil War victory. The Union won the war militarily but lost the peace when it abandoned Lincoln’s plans for Reconstruction. Lincoln had planned to reintegrate the Secessionist states back into the Union by carefully rebuilding the South. He understood that southern whites needed to be treated fairly while, at the same time, ensuring that the freed slaves received the resources they needed to build their communities and exercise their voting rights. Lincoln’s assassination put Vice President Andrew Johnson in the Oval Office and the job of Reconstruction fell to him. At first many believed he would follow in Lincoln’s footsteps. But he was an opportunist and once in power his true nature appeared. Johnson was mean-spirited, southerner who, while believing in the Union, was a racist and had once owned slaves.
In the years right after the Civil War, Black Americans used their new voting rights to gain representation in local and state governments and somewhat improve their economic condition. However, at the same time Johnson laid the foundation for the white southern power structure to reassert itself. By 1875, many of the gains that black southerners had made were being crushed. The South became an impoverished, surly, backwater, where the subjugation of Black Americans took on the only slightly subtler form of Jim Crow and the KKK.
Today, we celebrate an historic election that can shape our nation far into the future. We have a choice to make. Do we settle for another Armistice where we continue to put off the hard work for yet another generation? Or do we build a better future by eliminating bigotry and racism, promoting environmental and social justice, and creating a fair economy where everyone benefits? Do we dedicate ourselves to a long-term effort to heal our nation?
We need to acknowledge our centuries of injustices and make things right. It is time for us, all of us, to listen to each other and find common ground that we can build a better United States on. There can be no half-measures because that is how we got where we are now.
The only way that we can heal this nation is to demonstrate that our liberal values do work. We must show that our faith in the goodness and wisdom of humanity is not misplaced. The only way we can do this is to improve the quality of life for all Americans. Like the marshal Plan at the end of WW II we must invest and persevere, keeping focused on building a just, prosperous, and safe nation where everyone has the resources and opportunities they need to pursue their happiness.
About The illustration – In LayFayette’s Country
I found this WWI poster when removing an old photo from a frame. I put it aside, thinking that this is too good to throw away. It will come in handy sometime. Six months pass and here it is.
It is an illustration by Orson Byron Lowell, 1871 – 1956, Born in Wyoming, Iowa, his father, a landscape painter, quickly recognized and encouraged Lowell’s artistic talent. Lowell’s career spanned 60-years. Lowell described his work as, “The subjects are social in character, humorous and satirical, but not acrobatic. They are not comics and there are no political cartoons”. After his death, Lowell’s importance as an artist was acknowledged in a New York Times article that stated, “Mr. Lowell did for American society what Frederick Remington did for the Southwest and Toulouse-Lautrec did for the music halls of Paris. He was an artist with a reporter’s nose for a good story”.
The caption on the poster reads, “Monsieur Sommer, play for us your beautiful Star-Spangled Banner.”
For more see the Society of Illustrators, Museum of illustration,
https://societyillustrators.org/award-winners/orson-byron-lowell/
Note – Edited to remove typo. 11/12/2020