The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
World leaders gather to send out a message of ‘never again’
World leaders gathered to mark the end of the First World War 100 years ago, turning Paris into the epicentre of global commemorations that drove home a powerful message: never again.
More than 60 heads of state and government gathered for a ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, the symbol of sacrifice to the millions who died from 1914-18.
They heard high school students recalling the joy felt by soldiers and civilians alike when the fighting finally stopped at 11am on November 11 1918.
And they heard the commemoration’s host, French President Emmanuel Macron, warn about the fragility of peace and the dangers of nationalism: a theme that seemed directed, at least in part, at US President Donald Trump, who listened stony-faced.
“The traces of this war never went away,” Mr Macron said.
“The old demons are rising again,” he intoned. “We must reaffirm before our peoples our true and huge responsibility.”
The Paris weather – grey and damp – seemed aptly fitting when remembering a war fought in mud and relentless horror.
The commemorations started late, overshooting the centenary of the exact moment when, 100 years earlier at 11am, the silence of peace replaced the thunder of guns on the Western Front.
As bells marking the Armistice hour started ringing out across Paris and in many nations hit by the four years of slaughter, Mr Macron and other leaders were still on their way to the centennial site at the Arc de Triomphe.
President Trump arrived separately, in a motorcade that drove past two topless protesters with anti-war slogans on their chests who got through the rows of security and were quickly bundled away by police. The Femen group claimed responsibility.
Last to arrive was Russian President Vladimir Putin. German Chancellor Angela Merkel was positioned in pride of place between President Trump and Mr Macron, a powerful symbol of victors and vanquished now standing together, shoulder to shoulder.
Overhead, fighter jets ripped through the sky, trailing red, white and blue smoke. The geographical spread of the leaders in attendance showed how the “war to end all wars” left few corners of the earth untouched but which, little more than two decades later, was followed so quickly and catastrophically by the even deadlier World War Two.
On the other side of the globe, Australia and New Zealand held ceremonies to recall how the war killed and wounded soldiers and civilians in unprecedented numbers and in gruesome new, mechanised ways.
Those countries lost tens of thousands of soldiers far away in Europe and, most memorably, in the brutal 1915 battle of Gallipoli in Turkey.
In Paris, the jewel that Germany sought to capture in 1914 but which the Allies fought successfully to defend, the Armistice commemorations were being followed by the afternoon opening of a peace forum pushed by the host, Mr Macron.
President Trump was the most notable absentee at the forum, where Mr Macron’s defence of multilateralism will take centre stage.
President Trump lives by an “America First” credo and plans to visit the American cemetery at Suresnes on the outskirts of Paris before heading home.
On Saturday, he was criticised for cancelling a visit to the Belleau Wood battleground north-east of Paris because of rain.