Why we should be proud to invite the German President to the Cenotaph

It’s the British thing to do, says ROBERT HARDMAN (and would stop preening Macron from hijacking the Armistice centenary)

FOR a solemn and sacred event which has remained virtually unchanged for as long as most people can remember, it is all going to be very different this year as we put on our poppies and commemorate the fallen.

Remembrance Sunday 2018 will also be the centenary of Armistice Day — the day the guns fell silent — so it goes without saying that this is going to be a monumentally important anniversary.

In addition to the annual wreathlaying at the Cenotaph, led by the Royal Family and party leaders, there will be a number of special events across the land, including synchronised bell-ringing and a ‘people’s parade’ through London by descendants of those who fought in the Great War.

Yet the most remarkable aspect of this centenary has still to be confirmed: the presence of the German head of state. Thanks to a beady-eyed photographer outside Downing Street — and a careless official carrying a formal memo under her arm — we learn that ministers are debating whether to invite the German President, no less, to the Cenotaph.

Pivotal

I understand that Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who took office last year, has already accepted an invitation to attend the special candlelit service of thanksgiving at Westminster Abbey that will round off this milestone day.

Senior members of the Royal Family and cabinet ministers will join representatives of all the Services and veterans at the 6pm event, which will be televised live on BBC1. Oscarwinning actor Eddie Redmayne has been earmarked for a central role, reading out dispatches from the trenches on the day peace broke out.

Herr Steinmeier’s presence at the Abbey will certainly be a powerful statement of reconciliation — but there is the intriguing possibility that he may also be invited to the even more important 11am service at the Cenotaph.

According to the memo captured on camera, the Government had originally planned to limit German involvement to the Westminster Abbey service, ‘given that the Cenotaph is about remembering those who have been effected [sic] by all wars/conflicts rather than just WW1’.

However, the unnamed official adds: ‘I would welcome a fresh look at this.’

Let us hope that wise heads prevail and we do invite the president of Germany to Whitehall to mark that revered 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.

For nothing, surely, would make it clearer that, contrary to what our foreign critics and self-loathing luvvies may say, this is not a small-minded nation fixated on the past.

The annual Remembrance Sunday ceremony does indeed commemorate those from all the Armed Forces who have made the ultimate sacrifice in the service of the Crown, whether in wartime or in peacetime.

Yet it would in no way demean the fallen of other conflicts to have Herr Steinmeier there on this one, pivotal occasion, paying homage to a generation that is no longer with us.

One senior ex-officer, Colonel Richard Kemp, has voiced concerns that at such a sacred event just ‘one offended veteran is one too many’.

He may have a point, but let us study the wider picture. For, if we look beyond these shores, we may be shocked to learn that we didn’t actually have very much to do with World War I, after all.

Apparently, it was the French who won it.

President Macron of France has been extremely busy organising a series of international events which make it very clear that the main player in 1914 to 1918 was France.

He has decreed that the main international commemoration on November 11 will be at the Arc de Triomphe, with ‘more than 100 heads of state’ plus 3,400 lesser VIPs on the guest

list. Donald Trump has already said that he is coming and the Elysee Palace is waiting to hear from Vladimir Putin.

This will follow a special event held earlier in Compiegne, on the very spot where the Armistice document was signed in that famous railway carriage. Except the French are calling this the ‘Ceremonie Franco-Allemande’. In other words, the Armistice was purely a French/ German affair. Really?

This claim is every bit as bogus as the railway carriage that currently stands in Compiegne as a French national monument (the original was hauled off to Berlin in 1940 after Hitler had humiliatingly forced the French to sign their own surrender inside the carriage, which was eventually torched by the SS).

Strutting

The ceasefire was not ‘Franco-German’. There are two Allied signatures at the bottom: Marshal Foch, on behalf of France, and Sir Rosslyn Wemyss, the First Sea Lord, on behalf of Britain and her imperial forces. Don’t expect to hear anyone mention poor old Wemyss come November 11.

It is well worth studying the hilariously vainglorious official French video of all the upcoming events. In the days running up to the anniversary, Mr Macron will be embarking on a week-long grand tour of the Western Front. An interactive map illuminates his route like the Tour de France. On November 4, for example, you can welcome him in Strasbourg.

Three days later, he’ll be strutting around Verdun. On the sixth day, he is very kindly dropping in on the Battle of the Somme for a few hours, so perhaps he might make mention of Britain, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the other Allies. Paris will also stage a vast (and very French) theatrical production called Spectacle Shell Shock.

Even after the big event is over at the Arc de Triomphe, the French President is not stopping. For November 11 also marks the start of his three-day Paris Peace Forum.

Mr Macron has recorded a video message urging ‘world leaders, charities, intellectuals and stakeholders’ to come together in Paris ‘to reinvent multilateralism and all modern forms of co-operation’.

Gravitas

The subtext is very clear: this is all about reinventing France, and in particular Emmanuel Macron, as the ‘grand interlocutor’ of Western Europe — the same role which General de Gaulle sought for himself after the war.

I witnessed it with my own eyes last year when Mr Macron brilliantly rearranged the July 14 Bastille Day parade around the visit of Donald Trump. All anti-Trump protestors were banned from central Paris, and the parade was billed as a celebration of American support for France in World War I (once again, no mention of the Brits).

In other words, France has grabbed this centenary and is shamelessly using it for its own grandiose ends.

Quite rightly, Theresa May will not attempt to compete. Britain will have some very British bell-ringing and a ‘people’s parade’, thank you very much, but no triumphal road trip.

The presence of the Queen — the only serving Western leader who grew up surrounded by the Great War generation — will ensure that events in London are accorded the gravitas they deserve.

But how much more powerful still it would be for her to include the German President at this epochal moment. That really would be the definitive illustration of reconciliation, not some synthetic razzmatazz in France.

Presumably, if he is not invited by the Queen, Herr Steinmeier will feel obliged to accept Mr Macron’s invitation. I suspect that most veterans would much rather extend a magnanimous hand of friendship than let this preening show-off rewrite history.