Merkel-Macron embrace signals lessons learned
French leader rejects nationalism as heads of state gather German president at London ceremony
IT is a clearing in a French forest, its name forever associated with sadness.
Two armistices were signed beneath the trees there, and the meeting of the leaders of France and Germany, on the centenary of the first, sent a signal to a rebuilt but still fragile world.
The last occasion on which a German leader had been to the Forest of Compiègne, north-east of Paris, was in June 1940, to accept the French surrender.
Adolf Hitler had stipulated that it be received at the same spot, and in the same railway carriage, in which Germany had surrendered at the 11th hour of the 11th day and the 11th month, in 1918.
It was a replica carriage outside which Angela Merkel rested her head on the shoulder of Emmanuel Macron this weekend, as the German chancellor and French president stood side by side to remember the many that both countries had lost. As their diplomats waged a different kind of war, with Britain over Brexit and with Trump’s America over Nato, their embrace signalled a determination to learn from the past.
“Our Europe has been at peace for 73 years,” Mr Macron said.
“There is no precedent for it, and it is at peace because we willed it and first and foremost, because Germany and France wanted it.”
He then took Mrs Merkel’s hand in his, as the two of them went inside the carriage to sign the guest book.
Across the Channel, the president of Germany, FrankWalter Steinmeier, laid a wreath at the Cenotaph in Whitehall on behalf of the German people.
The traces of this war never went away. The old demons are rising. French President Emanuel Macron speaking at a ceremony in Paris.
It was the first time since the memorial was inaugurated in 1920 that a representative of the country had taken part in the UK’s national service of remembrance.
President Steinmeier’s presence was a symbol of the friendship that existed between the two countries today, the Government said.
But it was the French capital, the jewel that Germany sought to take in 1914 but which the Allies successfully fought to defend, on which the world’s attention was focused, as more than 60 heads of state arrived for a ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, the mute and powerful symbol of sacrifice to the millions who died from 1914-18.
They heard high school students tell of the joy felt by soldiers and civilians alike when the fighting finally stopped at 11am on November 11, 1918.
The gathered leaders also heard Mr Macron warn about the fragility of peace and the dangers of nationalism – a theme that seemed directed, at least in part, at President Trump, who listened stony-faced. “The traces of this war never went away,” Mr Macron said.
“The old demons are rising again. We must reaffirm before our peoples our true and huge responsibility.”
The Parisian weather, grey and damp, seemed aptly fitting in the context of 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.
Under a black cloud of umbrellas, a line of leaders led by Mr Macron and his wife Brigitte, marched in a silence on the cobbles of the Champs-Élysées.
The last to arrive was Russian President Vladimir Putin, as overhead, fighter jets left a trail of 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, yet which was followed by another, even deadlier, conflict.