The Guns Fall Silent !

Exactly a hundred years ago today,  the mass killing that was World War One in Europe came to an end when an armistice came into effect at eleven am on the eleventh day of the eleventh month. It was an unnecessary war.  An assassins bullet killed an arch-duke and a series of interlocking defence treaties made war inevitable.

The slaughter was just unimaginable.  War moved from the horse age to the machine gun and artillery shell.   It was fought in the skies with Zeppelins and aircraft and on the seas submarine warfare sought to starve opposing nations into surrender.  New weapons evolved and these included poison gas and armoured moving gun platforms that were named " tanks ".

It gained the title of " the war to end all wars ", but of course - it didn't !   It was simply the precursor of a new war twenty years later, caused by an unfair peace treaty called the " Treaty of Versailles " which was inflicted on Germany and caused an embittered corporal named Adolph Hitler to inflict National Socialism on his nation and plan a war of revenge.

One of the war's outcomes was the revolution in Russia that inflicted Communism on the world. This new Russia threatened to spread the ideology by force and caused the community of nations to live with a new fear.  But this world war was certainly the catalyst for change.

It accelerated the emancipation of women.  At the start of the first world war women were refused the vote in much of the world and their choice of education and jobs was limited.   The role of women was essentially wife and housekeeper, but the necessities of keeping the nation running saw women working in factories and evolving into men's jobs such as tram conductors.

That period after wars end saw living standards rise sharply as industry expanded and jobs became plentiful.  Education became a right rather than a privilege and improvements in the national diet improved longevity.   The world entered a " golden era " which was only curtailed by the great depression of the 1930's.  The formation of what became called " the League of Nations "  gave promise of the end of future wars, but attempts to limit the size of armies failed when national rivalries prevented consensus.

Australia was a long way from the battlefields of Europe but an amazing number of men from our small population answered the call of duty and our numerous war memorials carry the names of those who failed to return.   A century on the last of those who fought in that war are now dead but their nation pauses to remember a time when the way of life we cherished was threatened and our country's safety depended on the outcome of battles in Europe.