A moving end to four years of tributes

ANational Service of Remembrance has been held at the Cenotaph in Whitehall since 1920; but few can have been as dignified and affecting as yesterday’s event, coinciding with Armistice Day on the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War. It marked the conclusion of what has been an extraordinary four years of commemoration for a conflict that was long ago but, through the reminders of film, photography and literature, still seems so close.

The period since August 2014 has allowed many tragic and heroic stories to be retold. It has encouraged relatives to search out the names of their grandfathers and uncles among the tombstones of Europe and introduced another generation to the battlefields and a history they might otherwise have contemplated only briefly, if at all.

It has been a nationwide enterprise. Towns and villages across the land have marked the sacrifice of their native sons in their own way. Many have kept poppy representations in place for the entire four years. Most have taken the opportunity to renovate or spruce up their war memorials. In addition, modern artists have been inspired to produce moving and indelible imagery, from the sea of 800,000 poppies in the Tower of London moat created by Paul Cummins and Tom Piper in 2014 to the 70,000 shrouded figures created by Rob Heard to represent those who died at the Somme with no known grave. The representation of the faces of fallen soldiers on beaches at low tide to be washed away by the incoming sea was especially poignant yesterday.

As the final moments of the centenary approached, parts of London were brought to a standstill as thousands travelled to the Tower once again for an installation of 10,000 torches. The Royal British Legion deserves particular praise for keeping the memory alive through its annual poppy appeal, lest we forget. The Cenotaph was a fitting place for the culmination of the centenary commemorations, its familiar rituals and music accompanied by a procession featuring thousands of veterans who served in all the other wars that have taken place since the guns fell silent in 1918.

This year, the German president, Frank-walter Steinmeier, was invited to lay a wreath for the first time, in an act of reconciliation that was replicated in Paris, where the leaders of America and Germany gathered at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier beneath the Arc de Triomphe. As President Macron said, the war might seem a long time ago; but in historic terms, it was yesterday.