Honour all the fallen

At the very beginning of his book All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque says: “This is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped [its] shells, were destroyed by the war.” He was writing about German soldiers, but they could just as easily have been British, French or Russian. The Great War did not discriminate in its slaughter by nationality. Leaving aside the blame for who started the conflagration, we can all mourn its dead collectively.

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the end of the war, and both Armistice Day and Remembrance Sunday coincide on November 11. This will make the annual Act of Remembrance at the Cenotaph an even more poignant occasion than usual.

While Lutyens’ great monument in Whitehall has come to represent the dead of all wars, it was erected in 1920 to remember those who fell in the 1914-18 conflict. There are currently discussions in government over whether to extend an invitation to attend this year’s Cenotaph commemoration to the German president, Frank-walter Steinmeier, who is already due to attend a service at Westminster Abbey.

This has been debated in our letters pages, with some correspondents unhappy at the prospect. But we feel this would be the right thing to do, not only in a spirit of reconciliation that was achieved long ago, but to show we understand that those who died were serving their countries and doing their duty, whichever side they were on.