Louis Roney: Armistice

An “Armistice ” is a time when the fighting in a war stops, although the war may not necessarily be over. In France, I made a point of driving out to the Forest of Compiègne. There I entered a lonely railway car that sits on a short section of track in the woods. I sat down at the long table where, on Nov. 11, 1918, the Armistice was signed to end World War I, in which my father had fought as a U.S. infantryman. When France fell to the Nazis in June 1940, Hitler ordered that the surrender papers be signed in that very same railway car.

It occurs to me that life itself is one long war interspersed with blessed Armistice pauses, during which people rely for a while on hopes and dreams that never seem to come completely true. In the peace-bringing Treaty of Versailles was hidden the emerging figure of a man named Adolf Hitler who was later to bring the world years of horrendous killing. After six years of World War II came the Korean war, then the Vietnam War followed by all the less grandiose “conflicts” which are now almost beyond recall.

In the Middle Ages one man with a sword and a shield could kill another man armed identically. Today, one man has the power to initiate with his thumb the total destruction of a city of thousands. Such has been our progress in ways that are, if nothing else, measureable.

People used to fight about land, now they fight primarily about ideologies. We have elected a president who has never worn a U.S. uniform (he’s not the first), and yet has the power of life and death over countless people who wear our colors.

Presently, a distinguished married former general and head of the CIA, who was worth much to us if war should come, may have been thrown in the trash bin because he romanced his lady “biographer.” The trouble with people is that they invariably turn out to be people. Did we sign this man on as a faultless moralist, or as a brilliant warrior with the ability to protect us from our enemies?

When Dwight D. Eisenhower was romantically involved with his British chauffer, Kay Summersby, in WWII Europe, he was “dressed down” sternly by his superior, Gen. George C. Marshall. However, Eisenhower did not lose his command — a good thing for our side. Boys will be boys – and sometimes ‘Napoleans’ or ‘Eisenhowers.’ Even the dullest of us may embody immorality, but boys liking girls is not what kills people. It produces people.

And the smartest State Department guy in Washington on our side, it seems to me, should never forget that our embassies are considered to be American territory, protected by our own armed forces, even if our president chooses not to enforce that logical need. Training foreigners to protect our property and secrets is not long on smarts.

As a child, I often heard, “love makes the world go ‘round.’” The nature of adult life is that love’s revolutions all too often collide with a stark reality that is everywhere with us in our newspapers and broadcasts. Man is a quixotic creature with a restlessness in his very core that opposes peace at every turn. I have come to the conclusion that if I can create in my immediate surroundings an armistice of peace and love for a moment or two, I may indulge myself in the wild hope that I have brightened at least a small fragment of humanity.