Stop the Nonsense

An Australian military chaplain leading a memorial service in France on Armistice Day spoke of the young men who had sacrificed their lives resisting tyranny and fighting for peace during the First World War. It is time that we stopped believing this nonsense.

• The Great War had nothing to do with fighting tyranny. Some of the nations involved were ruled by democratic governments and others by kings and Kaisers. Each side spread propaganda proving that the other side was evil, but contrary to these lies, they were not tyrants. The Great War actually paved the way for tyranny to emerge. Hitler and Stalin were the real tyrants of Europe during the twentieth Century. If there had been no war, the communists would never have gained control in Russia. Without the war, the Nazis would never have come to power in Germany. The Great War gave both Hitler and Stalin the breaks they needed to become tyrants. Those who were fighting in that war were not resisting tyranny, but paving the way for it.
• The young men who died in the trenches in France and Brussels were no fighting for peace. If they really understood peace, they would not have been pushed into fighting by the pompous political leaders who started the Great War. They would have told the leaders who wanted a war to fight it themselves; to stop sipping tea and whiskey in their gentlemen’s clubs and go and stand in the mud and shoot at each other.
• We should stop perpetuating the myth that young men sacrificed their life for Australia, or whatever nation they came from. To be a sacrifice, a death must benefit someone. A young Australian who climbed out of his trench and was cut down while running through the mud, the rain and barbed wire towards a machine gun nest has provided no benefit to his nation. His death did not achieve anything. It was a total waste. The claim that he sacrificed his life for his nation is a stupid lie.
• We should stop talking about the glorious dead. It is not glorious to be dead, if you are only 21 and have not fulfilled God’s purpose for your life. Please do not say that God’s purpose for these young men was to die on the battlefield. The young men who died in the Great War are not gloriously dead, they were robbed of living.