Today, Celebrate and Honor Peace, Not War

I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.

      Dwight D. Eisenhower

Contrary to what you will hear from the American Legion and other warmongers today, November 11 is America's only holiday commemorating the cessation of hostilities.

At 11 minutes after 11 a.m. on November 11, 1918, the combatants in the War to End All Wars finally put down their weapons. The Treaty of Versailles had been signed months earlier, but this armistice was the true end of the Great War.

Today, reject the warmongers and the jingoists and the violence-worshippers, and stand with Veterans for Peace.

Veterans For Peace calls for the observance of Veterans Day to be in keeping with the holiday’s original intent. Congressional Act (52 Stat.351: 5U.S. Code, Sec.87a) approved May 13, 1938, made November 11^th of each year a legal Federal Holiday,“A day to be dedicated to the cause of world peace and to be thereafter celebrated and known as ‘Armistice Day’.”

The ceasefire on the, “eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month” of 1918 along the European Western Front was such a relief to all those involved as the world had never seen such horror and carnage as World War I. The horrible conflict that had come to be known as the “War to End War” brought the bulk of humanity to contemplate abolishing war.

Veterans For Peace calls on its members and allies to observe Veterans Day by rejecting militarism and the glorification of war. We call on the nation to honor veterans and all those who have died in war by working for peace and the prevention of war. There is no better way to honor the dead than to protect the living from the fear, terror and morale deprivation of war.