The
Time Has Come for Human Beings
to Make History
November 11 marks the day in 1918,
107 years ago, when on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th
month, the armistice treaty which ended World War I was signed.
More than 65 million soldiers were mobilized from the countries which confronted one another during the war, including the large numbers mobilized by Britain and France from their colonies, which included Canada. The average mortality rate of all deployed soldiers in the war was around 14 percent. Taking both military and civilian figures combined, the total number of deaths is estimated to be between 15 and 22 million (8.5 to 11 million military deaths and 6 to 13 million civilian deaths). When the 21 million wounded are included, the total number is estimated to be about 40 million people.
The phrase Lest we forget is commonly used in remembrance services and on commemorative occasions in countries which make up the British Commonwealth. These are the countries which were connected to the British Empire, including Canada, New Zealand and Australia. The phrase is originally found in the Bible, in Deuteronomy (4:7-9), where we read:
7For what nation is there so great,
who hath God so nigh unto them,
as the Lord our God is in all things
that we call upon him for?
8And what nation is there so great,
that hath statutes and judgments so righteous as all this law,
which I set before you this day?
9Only take heed to thyself,
and keep thy soul diligently,
lest thou forget the things which thine eyes have seen,
and lest they depart from thy heart all the days of thy life:
but teach them thy sons, and thy son's sons [...]
The phrase is subsequently taken up by the champion of everything colonial, Rudyard Kipling, in his 1897 poem Recessional, composed on the occasion of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee. The main theme of Recessional if a nation forgets the true source of its success (the "Lord God of Hosts" and His "ancient sacrifice" of "a humble and contrite heart"), its military or material possessions will be insufficient in times of war.
With the passage of time, the plea of the rulers to not forget past sacrifices has become linked with preparations for war today. But when the peoples say it, they have in mind the phrase Never Again, used by liberated prisoners at the Buchenwald concentration camp at the end of World War II to denounce fascism.
These two meanings clash once again
this year, more than ever, as the U.S. imperialists and members
of NATO and the G7, including Canada, step up the militarization
of their economies and war preparations along with use of police
powers to stifle dissent. Canada alone increased military
spending in its November 4 war budget by $60 billion over the
next three years, expanding it to $81.8 billion in five years.
As the rulers once again prepare to defend the values of empire, the war hysteria they are generating is palpable. They are using Remembrance Day to shed crocodile tears in the biblical spirit of defending the "Lord God of Hosts" who wields the supreme power and sacrificed his only son to protect his chosen people who now owe him allegiance. The spirit is that expressed by Alfred, Lord Tennyson in his poem The Charge of the Light Brigade: "Theirs is but to do and die." The poem was written about an infamous event during the Crimean War (1853-1856) fought between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the Ottoman Empire, France, Britain, and Sardinia. The phrase brings attention to soldiers' unfortunate duty to obey orders without question, rather than reasoning why they were given the orders. It is a fundamental negation of individual conscience and responsibility and the modern duty of all human beings to be accountable for individual and collective actions and to uphold the general interests of society as determined and implemented by the peoples themselves.
The negation of individual and collective responsibility is the rules-based system of law and values of the warmongers today whose countries are members of the Genocide 7 and NATO. Once again they are increasing the militarization of their economies and all of life and stepping up war preparations, signing unacceptable treaties and engaging in secret deals to assure their hegemony over the peoples of the entire world.
Rather than solve the problems facing the natural world and the societies inhabited by human beings, the U.S. imperialists and NATO countries, including Canada, and all reactionaries try to imbue the polity with hysteria for war. They blame their adversaries especially Russia for their own failure to deliver the peace, freedom and democracy promised after World War I dubbed the war to end all wars, a phrase coined by British author H.G. Wells in his 1914 book, The War That Will End War. But in the absence of overthrowing the imperialist world order, the danger of war persists and the peoples must do everything in their power to make sure the mobilization of the people for war fails.
How to do this was established in 1917 when the Russian people, exhausted by the war, refused to fight for the Czar. They answered the call of the communists under the leadership of V.I. Lenin and launched the Great October Revolution. The new order under the leadership of V.I. Lenin took Russia out of the war, cancelled all unequal and secret imperialist treaties and embarked on establishing anti-war governments for Soviet Russia and then for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).
Today, the reactionaries are so desperate that they use the occasion of remembrance marking the end of World War I to blame Russia as an avowed enemy and to present the U.S. and NATO as the champions of peace. But given all the evidence of what the so-called rules-based world order of the U.S., Canada and other G7 and NATO countries stands for, they will have a very hard time this year presenting the U.S. as the champion of freedom, democracy and peace, or Canada as the new saviour of humankind as the Carney government says of itself.
Attempts to mobilize Canada's young people to join the military will also fail, despite the attendance of what are referred to as "Representatives of the Youth of Canada" on the list of special invited guests at the official Ottawa remembrance ceremony.
The Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) joins the
peoples from coast to coast to coast to commemorate all those
who fell victim to the slaughter of World War I and subsequent
wars but it resolutely opposes all attempts to militarize
wreath-laying ceremonies which honour Canadians and Quebeckers
who were sacrificed as cannon fodder in World War I.
Through sleight of hand, the federal government and the NATO Association of Canada conflate those whose lives were sacrificed in World War I, an inter-imperialist war for the redivision of the world, with those who fought Nazi Fascism in World War II which became an anti-fascist war. They conflate anti-fascist resistance struggles and national liberation wars with the crimes NATO has committed since World War II and the U.S./NATO wars of destruction, regime change, and brutal war crimes they are committing today against the Palestinian and other peoples. Wars of destruction, assassinations, torture, mass killings and now massive destruction, displacement and genocide in Gaza and crimes in Lebanon, Sudan and other countries, are all justified in the name of upholding Canadian values.
This is said at a time today when the U.S. democracy and the democracy of its Genocide Cartel, the G7 which includes Canada, and their claims to stand for peace, freedom and democracy, are condemned on the world scale. The U.S. is consolidating its government of police powers and impunity, creating a profound existentialist crisis. In Canada and Quebec, as is the case in the U.S. and all the countries of the G7 and NATO members, the heightened hysteria about immigrants and refugees translates into more state-organized violence and assaults on women, children, seniors, workers, Indigenous Peoples, Inuit and Mιtis. The declaration that Canada can be saved by walking in lockstep with the U.S. has no takers.
On this occasion, the people of
Canada and Quebec salute all those who have waged and continue
to wage courageous resistance in our country. This includes the
workers from all sectors of the economy, the self-sacrificing
health care personnel, teachers and education workers, and
peoples in the towns and villages giving their all to stop the
privatization and sellout of our resources. Importantly, it
includes the youth and all those speaking in their own names to
support the Resistance movements in Palestine, Lebanon, Haiti,
Cuba, India and all countries of Asia, Africa, Latin America,
the Caribbean, Oceania, Europe and the United States.
The peoples are on the cusp of making great headway in humanity's fight to turn things around in their own favour but these are trying times which contain great dangers. We must strengthen ourselves by taking up the program of organizing the people on a new basis.
As we commemorate all the lives lost in World War I, the Duty of Memory leads us to draw the conclusion that we must all work hard to strengthen the mass movements for peace, freedom and democracy. We must strengthen the work to build a mass communist revolutionary party which trains its members in mass democratic methods of work and decision-making. Such a party must be capable of creating transitional forms of organization within all spheres of endeavour. These must also be based on mass democratic ideological and political mobilization which empowers the working class and people to take the decisions on all matters which affect their lives.
(Statistics from Brill's Encyclopedia of the First World War)
This article was published in
Volume 55
Number 45 - November 11, 2025
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/Tmlm2025/Articles/TS55451.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca