O ilustrare a Împărăției care va veni! În ajunul de Nașterii Domnului soldații din cele două tabere au luat inițiativa de  a suspenda ostilitățile ca să sărbătorească împreună. Concluzii? Vă las pe voi să le trageți.

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Plans have been announced by Prince William for a school competition to design a memorial to the 1914 Christmas truce at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire.

The story of the Christmas truce – with men from both sides climbing out of the trenches to play football, exchange presents and take photographs – is the most moving of all First World War stories.

The reasons are obvious. To go from killing each other one second to shaking hands the next, shows the survival of humanity at a time when horribly inhuman things were happening. It turned a lofty principle – that national, political hostilities shouldn’t necessarily produce personal ones – into action.

But the most moving thing about the truce was that it was instinctive. It wasn’t declared on a national level, or even by senior officers. Instead, soldiers just started shouting out friendly messages to each other across No Man’s Land on Christmas Eve 1914. The next day, the instinctive power of friendship took the truce even further: they actually met in No Man’s Land and played their football match, as well as burying casualties – another burning demand made on all of us by natural, humane forces.

I look forward to the unveiling of the memorial – a pair of trees from the Western Front for goalposts, perhaps?

Categories: Articole de interes general