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Remembered Today:

'Marking the Great War' - Daily Telegraph letter


NigelS

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Don't think this letter from yesterday's Daily Telegraph (15th July) has been mentioned previously Click (scroll down page):

Marking the Great War

SIR -; We are just 55 weeks away from August 4 2014, the 100th anniversary of the start of the First World War. Much effort has been made to plan for the centenary. In truth, no one knows what we are exactly trying to commemorate. A victory, or a national tragedy? A long fought-over peace or a failed peace that precipitated an even greater conflagration 20 years later? Some of the finest poetry, prose and art of the last century, or a lost generation of creative artists and intellectuals?

With this degree of ambiguity, I propose that the best response to mark the centenary would be a two-minute silence at midday on August 4 next year. This should be observed by the whole nation, and indeed the Commonwealth, as a memorial to the 750,000 British soldiers and 150,000 from the Commonwealth who died fighting, and far greater numbers wounded in body and mind.

Silence in the face of such unimaginable suffering is the most appropriate response.

Dr Anthony Seldon

Master, Wellington College

Crowthorne, Berkshire

A fair point, although - and I don't think he's suggesting such - not to the exclusion of other commemorations

NigelS

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I sent a response (but they haven't used it, blast their eyes) pondering whther Dr Seldon would have received a better response had he suggested two minutes' applause, which seems the modern way of showing (ahem) "respect".

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It would be nice if there was minute silence in Ireland

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Is that "a very small silence" or "a short silence"?

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If each second represented a thousand IrishMen and Women who died, It would come up short by ten seconds

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