Ever and Again

Predictably enough, the centenary of the 1918 armistice is to be commemorated by perpetuating one of the more vulgar and meretricious displays of patriotism from the centenary of the war's breaking out. A tide of ceramic poppies, to the exact number of significant lives lost, is to be recycled for the appropriately-named Imperial War Museums in London and Manchester. Originally placed at the Tower of London, the installation has been gracing various sites across the country, including Hereford Cathedral, where doubtless much repentance was done for the Church's role in recruiting dupes for the crusade to save little Belgium from the baby-eating Hun. It's appropriate enough, in a shabby, bungled, British sort of way, that the interlude between the end of the fighting and the Treaty of Versailles should be commemorated by recycling a bit of exclusionist rah-rah associated with the beginning of the holocaust. Certainly there could be few more poignant ways to show precisely what lessons were learned at the time, and continue to be learned.