Ninety years and beyond

11 November 1918: ninety years ago today was the armistice. It makes this particular Remembrance Day sombre and dark, nor does it help that the weather in Toronto is cold and grey.

Not surprisingly, whenever this day comes, I am always reminded of Erich Maria Remarque's 1929 roman a clef, entitled All Quiet on the Western Front. It was made into a couple film versions, the first of which, as with the novel, were banned by the Nazis upon their seizure of power.

It is a bleak, tragic, but also profoundly beautiful story of a group of idealistic young soldiers whose lives, one by one, are destroyed by the nightmare that was the First World War. The novel's chief protagonist, Paul Baumer, depicts his experiences through idealistic -- almost naive -- eyes that gradually adjust to the reality of the war. Nearing the end, the idealism is gone, with little hope of any internal redemption.

Remarque wrote several other war novels, including a sequel of sorts called The Road Back, but it is safe to say that they paled compared to his main masterpiece. This is what made him, and what has also come to symbolize the tragedy and darkness that is war.

Allow me, then, to quote something poignant from the novel. It was a hard choice to make, just because the novel is a work of poignancy.

"Had we returned home in 1916, out of the suffering and the strength of our experiences we might have unleashed a storm. Now if we go back we will be weary, broken, burnt out, rootless, and without hope. We will not be able to find our way any more...

And men will not understand us -- for the generation that grew up before us, though it has passed these years with us here, already had a home and a calling; now it will return to its old occupations, and the war will be forgotten -- and the generation that has grown up after us will be strange to us and push us aside. We will be superfluous even to ourselves, we will grow older, a few will adapt themselves, some others will merely submit, and most will be bewildered; -- the years will pass by and in the end we shall fall into ruin."

Lest we forget.