Editors’ words ring true 100 years later
MARKING CENTENARY
A HUNDRED years ago today, the Daily Record published a leader column simply titled: “The Triumph.”
The editors’ words still strike a chord today.
It began telling readers: “The ‘Cease Fire’ has sounded like the best of benedictions over the whole world, in the lands of humiliation as in those of triumph.”
It then praised the “Allied people who have saved the world for Democracy” saying: “They it is who have annihilated as creators, destroyed to build, sacrificed to the full so that this generation may hand on the torch of Liberty fanned by their idealism and courage to such a flame that the light will shine into all the earth’s darkest corners.”
While celebrating the victory, the Record led readers in sparing thoughts for those who paid the ultimate sacrifice, quoting the 1917 war poem They Also Shall Return by Lance Corporal Joseph Lee. The column said: “If those
in authority are pleading for self control amidst universal jubilation, it is because the dread and the fear of anguish lifting from millions of hearts cannot carry away with them the grief in millions of others. “The free home-coming of our Crusaders is at hand: but ‘A Dead man shall stand; At each live man’s hand.’” Describing the signing of the Armistice hours earlier, the editors added: “We have to remember that this end is but a beginning, and that the main thought to guide us in celebrating complete military victory is the warning so often given that, in the economic sense, it will not be possible for another generation to know who has won the peace.”