Christmas 1914

The First World War broke out in August of 1914. Many rushed to war almost gleefully, confident in victory for their particular side. Many thought the war would be over by Christmas. But when Christmas came the war was still young. It would last another four years and claim the lives of some 8 million soldiers before it was through.

In the midst of this bloodshed, though, a remarkable thing happened. In many places along the Western Front, particularly where the British and the Germans faced each other, unofficial Christmas truces were made in 1914. And here, for a brief few hours, the killing ceased.

Instead of firing bullets at each other, the mortal enemies sang Christmas carols to one another on Christmas Eve. German soldiers even decorated their trenches with candles and with Christmas Trees — tannebaum, they called them. On Christmas morning, soldiers from both sides met in no man’s land and exchanged what gifts they had: buttons and medals, candy and tobacco and liquor. Soldiers who had once been barbers gave free haircuts. One German soldier who had been a juggler in happier times gave a performance in no man’s land.

Here is how one German officer (Leutenant Johannes Niemann, 133rd Royal Saxon Regiment) described the truce:

“Next morning the mist was slow to clear and suddenly my orderly threw himself into my dugout to say that both the German and Scottish soldiers had come out of their trenches and were fraternising along the front. I grabbed my binoculars and looking cautiously over the parapet saw the incredible sight of our soldiers exchanging cigarettes, schnapps and chocolate with the enemy. Later a Scottish soldier appeared with a football which seemed to come from nowhere and a few minutes later a real football match got underway. The Scots marked their goal mouth with their strange caps and we did the same with ours. It was far from easy to play on the frozen ground, but we continued, keeping rigorously to the rules, despite the fact that it only lasted an hour and that we had no referee. A great many of the passes went wide, but all the amateur footballers, although they must have been very tired, played with huge enthusiasm. … The game finished with a score of three goals to two in favour of Fritz against Tommy.”

And here is how a British counterpart (Second Lieutenant Cyril Drummond, 135th Battery, Royal Field Artillery) described it:

“In the sunken road I met an officer I knew, and we walked along together so that we could look across to the German front line, which was only about seventy yards away. One of the Germans waved to us and said, ‘Come over here!’ We said, ‘You come over here if you want to talk.’ So he climbed out of his trench and came over towards us. We met and very gravely saluted each other. He was joined by more Germans, and some of the Dublin Fusiliers from our own trenches came over to join us. No German officer came out, it was only the ordinary soldiers. We talked, mainly in French, because my German was not very good and none of the Germans could speak English well. But we managed to get together all right. One of them said, ‘We don’t want to kill you and you don’t want to kill us, so why shoot?’

“They gave me some German tobacco and German cigars - they seemed to have plenty of those, and very good ones too — and they asked whether we had any jam. One of the Dublin Fusiliers got a tin of jam which had been opened, but very little taken out, and he gave it to a German who gave him two cigars for it. I lined them all up and took a photograph.”

The goodwill between enemies was only temporary. In a matter of days they were back to the grim business of trying to blow one another apart. But for a few brief hours, the influence of the Prince of Peace had been felt.

(Drawing by Bruce Bairnsfather, 1914. The above quotations, and others, are available here.)

Democrats and Generals

During the 1916 presidential campaign, Democratic incumbent Woodrow Wilson campaigned on a slogan of “He kept us out of war”, referring of course to the First World War which had engulfed Europe. Thanks in no small part to this slogan, he won re-election. A month into his second term, Wilson asked Congress to declare war on Germany.

During the 1940 presidential campaign, Democratic incumbent Franklin D. Roosevelt declared, “I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again and again: Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars”, referring of course to the Second World War which had engulfed Europe. Fourteen months later, Roosevelt asked Congress to declare war on Japan.

During the 1964 presidential campaign, Democratic incumbent Lyndon B. Johnson declared, “We are not about to send American boys nine or ten thousand miles from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves”, referring of course to the fighting between North and South Vietnam. In 1965 Johnson increased the number of American troops in Vietnam eight-fold (from 23,300 on December 31, 1964 to 184,300 on the same date a year later).

Promising not to go to war and then breaking that promise seems to be something of a time-honored tradition among Democratic presidents. The criticism here is not so much of the eventual decision to go to war, but rather in the earlier promise not to go to war (or, in Wilson's case, the overwhelming implication not to go to war). Such promises should never have been made, for how can you know that Pearl Harbor will not be bombed? Or that your merchant ships will not be torpedoed? Who were Wilson and Roosevelt and Johnson to try their hands at fortune-telling?

The Lord's brother James touches on this human frailty in chapter four of his epistle, verses 13-15: “Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow, we shall go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.’ Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. Instead, you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we shall live and also do this or that.’”

So: Beware the Democratic presidential candidate who promises no war! But if we cannot trust Democratic presidents to keep us out of war—and four of the five wars America fought in the 20th century were Democratic wars—is there a class of president who does avoid war?

My father pointed out to me long ago that America has never gone to war while an ex-general has been president. And we have had no shortage of ex-generals reach the White House: George Washington, Andrew Jackson, William H. Harrison, Zachary Taylor, U.S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James Garfield, Chester Arthur, Benjamin Harrison and Dwight Eisenhower.

This is less surprising than it might seem. There is a special hatred of war that only those who have sent men to their deaths can know. Writing to his brother in May 1943, Ike mentioned pacifists back home and observed, “I doubt whether any of these people, with their academic or dogmatic hatred of war, detest it as much as I do. They probably have not seen bodies rotting on the ground and smelled the stench of decaying human flesh. They have not visited a field hospital crowded with the desperately wounded.”

It is wonderfully ironic that old warriors like Eisenhower—with belligerent-sounding policies like massive retaliation and brinksmanship—do more to achieve peace than placard-bearing protesters or ivory-towered intellectuals. Or, apparently, liberal Democrats.