The importance of John McCrae's In Flanders Fields some 100 years on

spaminator

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The importance of John McCrae's In Flanders Fields some 100 years on
Jane Stevenson
Published:
October 31, 2018
Updated:
October 31, 2018 4:48 PM EDT
Wild poppies grow in the 'Trench of Death', a preserved Belgian World War One trench system on July 14, 2017 in Diksmuide, Belgium. (Jack Taylor/Getty Images)
“In Flanders fields the poppies blow, Between the crosses, row on row …”
So begins the 1915 poem penned by Lt.-Col. (and Dr.) John McCrae during the First World War, the end of which celebrates its 100th anniversary this year.
In Flanders Fields was subsequently published in the London magazine Punch in December of that year and exponentially grew in popularity to become the most famous poem of Remembrance Day whether it was used to sell war bonds or for conscription in the past, or excerpted on a Canadian 10 dollar bill more recently.
Just three years ago, a bronze statue of McCrae — who died in January 1918 of pneumonia and was buried in Wimereux Cemetery in France — went up next to the National Artillery Memorial in Ottawa with him portrayed on a broken tree branch just having signed a copy of his poem. (There’s also a second statue in his hometown of Guelph.)
Lt.-Col. John McCrae. (National Archives of Canada)
So how did McCrae’s verses became the signature poem of Remembrance Day in the first place, as he paid tribute to his fellow soldier, friend and former student Lt. Alexis Helmer who was killed in action in the Second Battle of Ypres where the Germans first used poison gas en masse?
“You can imagine this fortysomething doctor, very patriotic and doing his best but his kind of overwhelmed by what he’s seeing �— all this death and destruction — and then a special friend, someone that he knew, a young man, who died,” said Veteran Affairs education officer Alan Banman.
“He steps away the next day from his surgery and helping the wounded and he takes a few minutes, he was always an amateur poet all his life, and the next day, he put pen to paper and he wrote the lines of In Flanders Fields.”
It was only when it was published in Punch that it started to catch on.
“Some magic happened in those lines that he wrote down in that poem and it caught fire,” said Banman.
“People always knew for years that (poppies) were grow near fresh grave sites (in Europe) where the soil had been disturbed to bury people so he saw this at so many war graves so it kind of moved him to use the poppy.
“It’s hard to describe why it caught on. It just really resonated for people. And if you look at the poem, people here and now we see the First World War, rightly so, as this tragic event with so much death. But at the time it was also seen as a righteous crusade. It was seen as freedom versus tyranny and that the Kaiser had to be beaten, hold that torch high, and originally it was very much a call to keep fighting.
But over the years it seemed to have morphed. It was seen as that, yes, but also pick up that torch to remember those who put their lives and gave their lives for peace and freedom.”
http://torontosun.com/news/national...-mccraes-in-flanders-fields-some-100-years-on
 

Curious Cdn

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The invasion of Belgium and France was criminal and the complete disregard for humanity that such reckless agression embodies had to be stopped. This was a righteous war ... a horrible one but one, alas, that had to be fought. McCrae seemed to know this, even as he was surrounded by the horror of the Second Battle of Ypres. There is no doubt in his message.
 

MHz

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You like celebrating the needless deaths of many, many soldiers do you Walnut?

The Brits battle for some hill in South Africa still holds the stats for the most shells landing in the shortest amount of time, killing a record number of soldiers. What are the odds of two events being on the up and up?? I would think the side that did all the dying would have noticed the wagons going up the hill were heavy and light on the way down so they were not abandoning 'the high ground'.
Let me guess, the Generals were all promoted rather than tossed into the sea while still alive.
 

MHz

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This was a righteous war ... a horrible one but one, alas, that had to be fought.
You really are fukking nuts aren't you?? Might as well just piss on the graves of 100M Gentiles as that is how many died in two fake WW's.

(in part)

http://www.sweetliberty.org/issues/israel/freedman.htm
The Truth will stand on its own merit
A Jewish Defector Warns America:
Benjamin Freedman Speaks​
by Benjamin H. Freedman
Introductory Note -- Benjamin H. Freedman was one of the most intriguing and amazing individuals of the 20th century.
Mr. Freedman, born in 1890, was a successful Jewish businessman of New York City who was at one time the principal owner of the Woodbury Soap Company. He broke with organized Jewry after the Judeo-Communist victory of 1945, and spent the remainder of his life and the great preponderance of his considerable fortune, at least 2.5 million dollars, exposing the Jewish tyranny which has enveloped the United States.
Mr. Freedman knew what he was talking about because he had been an insider at the highest levels of Jewish organizations and Jewish machinations to gain power over our nation. Mr. Freedman was personally acquainted with Bernard Baruch, Samuel Untermyer, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Joseph Kennedy, and John F. Kennedy, and many more movers and shakers of our times.
This speech was given before a patriotic audience in 1961 at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C., on behalf of Conde McGinley's patriotic newspaper of that time, Common Sense. Though in some minor ways this wide-ranging and extemporaneous speech has become dated, Mr. Freedman's essential message to us -- his warning to the West -- is more urgent than ever before. -- K.A.S. ---



Now, you say, 'well, that's a very broad statement to make', but let me show what happened while you were -- I don't want to wear that out --- let me show what happened while WE were all asleep. I'm including myself with you. We were all asleep. What happened?
World War I broke out in the summer of 1914. Nineteen-hundred and fourteen was the year in which World War One broke out. There are few people here my age who remember that. Now that war was waged on one side by Great Britain, France, and Russia; and on the other side by Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey. What happened?
Within two years Germany had won that war: not alone won it nominally, but won it actually. The German submarines, which were a surprise to the world, had swept all the convoys from the Atlantic Ocean, and Great Britain stood there without ammunition for her soldiers, stood there with one week's food supply facing her -- and after that, starvation.
At that time, the French army had mutinied. They lost 600,000 of the flower of French youth in the defense of Verdun on the Somme. The Russian army was defecting. They were picking up their toys and going home, they didn't want to play war anymore, they didn't like the Czar. And the Italian army had collapsed.
Now Germany -- not a shot had been fired on the German soil. Not an enemy soldier had crossed the border into Germany. And yet, here was Germany offering England peace terms. They offered England a negotiated peace on what the lawyers call a status quo ante basis. That means: “Let's call the war off, and let everything be as it was before the war started.”
Well, England, in the summer of 1916 was considering that. Seriously! They had no choice. It was either accepting this negotiated peace that Germany was magnanimously offering them, or going on with the war and being totally defeated.
While that was going on, the Zionists in Germany, who represented the Zionists from Eastern Europe, went to the British War Cabinet and -- I am going to be brief because this is a long story, but I have all the documents to prove any statement that I make if anyone here is curious, or doesn't believe what I'm saying is at all possible -- the Zionists in London went to the British war cabinet and they said: “Look here. You can yet win this war. You don't have to give up. You don't have to accept the negotiated peace offered to you now by Germany. You can win this war if the United States will come in as your ally.”
The United States was not in the war at that time. We were fresh; we were young; we were rich; we were powerful. They [Zionists] told England: “We will guarantee to bring the United States into the war as your ally, to fight with you on your side, if you will promise us Palestine after you win the war.”
In other words, they made this deal: “We will get the United States into this war as your ally. The price you must pay us is Palestine after you have won the war and defeated Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey.”
Now England had as much right to promise Palestine to anybody, as the United States would have to promise Japan to Ireland for any reason whatsoever. It's absolutely absurd that Great Britain -- that never had any connection or any interest or any right in what is known as Palestine -- should offer it as coin of the realm to pay the Zionists for bringing the United States into the war.
However, they made that promise, in October of 1916. October, nineteen hundred and sixteen. And shortly after that -- I don't know how many here remember it -- the United States, which was almost totally pro-German -- totally pro-German -- because the newspapers here were controlled by Jews, the bankers were Jews, all the media of mass communications in this country were controlled by Jews, and they were pro-German because their people, in the majority of cases came from Germany, and they wanted to see Germany lick the Czar.
The Jews didn't like the Czar, and they didn't want Russia to win this war. So the German bankers -- the German-Jews -- Kuhn Loeb and the other big banking firms in the United States refused to finance France or England to the extent of one dollar. They stood aside and they said: “As long as France and England are tied up with Russia, not one cent!” But they poured money into Germany, they fought with Germany against Russia, trying to lick the Czarist regime.
Now those same Jews, when they saw the possibility of getting Palestine, they went to England and they made this deal. At that time, everything changed, like the traffic light that changes from red to green. Where the newspapers had been all pro-German, where they'd been telling the people of the difficulties that Germany was having fighting Great Britain commercially and in other respects, all of a sudden the Germans were no good. They were villains. They were Huns. They were shooting Red Cross nurses. They were cutting off babies' hands. And they were no good.
Well, shortly after that, Mr. Wilson declared war on Germany.
The Zionists in London sent these cables to the United States, to Justice Brandeis: “Go to work on President Wilson. We're getting from England what we want. Now you go to work, and you go to work on President Wilson and get the United States into the war." And that did happen. That's how the United States got into the war. We had no more interest in it; we had no more right to be in it than we have to be on the moon tonight instead of in this room.
Now the war -- World War One -- in which the United States participated had absolutely no reason to be our war. We went in there -- we were railroaded into it -- if I can be vulgar, we were suckered into -- that war merely so that the Zionists of the world could obtain Palestine. Now, that is something that the people in the United States have never been told. They never knew why we went into World War One. Now, what happened?
After we got into the war, the Zionists went to Great Britain and they said: “Well, we performed our part of the agreement. Let's have something in writing that shows that you are going to keep your bargain and give us Palestine after you win the war.” Because they didn't know whether the war would last another year or another ten years. So they started to work out a receipt. The receipt took the form of a letter, and it was worded in very cryptic language so that the world at large wouldn't know what it was all about. And that was called the Balfour Declaration.
The Balfour Declaration was merely Great Britain's promise to pay the Zionists what they had agreed upon as a consideration for getting the United States into the war. So this great Balfour Declaration, that you hear so much about, is just as phony as a three dollar bill. And I don't think I could make it more emphatic than that.
Now, that is where all the trouble started. The United States went in the war. The United States crushed Germany. We went in there, and it's history. You know what happened. Now, when the war was ended, and the Germans went to Paris, to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, there were 117 Jews there, as a delegation representing the Jews, headed by Bernard Baruch. I was there: I ought to know. Now what happened?
The Jews at that peace conference, when they were cutting up Germany and parceling out Europe to all these nations that claimed a right to a certain part of European territory, the Jews said, “How about Palestine for us?” And they produced, for the first time to the knowledge of the Germans, this Balfour Declaration. So the Germans, for the first time realized, “Oh, that was the game! That's why the United States came into the war.” And the Germans for the first time realized that they were defeated, they suffered this terrific reparation that was slapped onto them, because the Zionists wanted Palestine and they were determined to get it at any cost.
Now, that brings us to another very interesting point. When the Germans realized this, they naturally resented it. Up to that time, the Jews had never been better off in any country in the world than they had been in Germany.
You had Mr. Rathenau there, who was maybe 100 times as important in industry and finance as is Bernard Baruch in this country. You had Mr. Balin, who owned the two big steamship lines, the North German Lloyd's and the Hamburg-American Lines. You had Mr. Bleichroder, who was the banker for the Hohenzollern family. You had the Warburgs in Hamburg, who were the big merchant bankers -- the biggest in the world. The Jews were doing very well in Germany. No question about that. Now, the Germans felt: “Well, that was quite a sellout.”
It was a sellout that I can best compare -- suppose the United States was at war today with the Soviet Union. And we were winning. And we told the Soviet Union: “Well, let's quit. We offer you peace terms. Let's forget the whole thing.” And all of a sudden Red China came into the war as an ally of the Soviet Union. And throwing them into the war brought about our defeat. A crushing defeat, with reparations the likes of which man's imagination cannot encompass.
Imagine, then, after that defeat, if we found out that it was the Chinese in this country, our Chinese citizens, who all the time we thought they were loyal citizens working with us, were selling us out to the Soviet Union and that it was through them that Red China was brought into the war against us. How would we feel, in the United States against Chinese? I don't think that one of them would dare show his face on any street. There wouldn't be lampposts enough, convenient, to take care of them. Imagine how we would feel.
Well, that's how the Germans felt towards these Jews. "We've been so nice to them"; and from 1905 on, when the first Communist revolution in Russia failed, and the Jews had to scramble out of Russia, they all went to Germany. And Germany gave them refuge. And they were treated very nicely. And here they sold Germany down the river for no reason at all other than they wanted Palestine as a so-called “Jewish commonwealth.”
Now, Nahum Sokolow -- all the great leaders, the big names that you read about in connection with Zionism today -- they, in 1919, 1920, '21, '22, and '23, they wrote in all their papers -- and the press was filled with their statements -- that "the feeling against the Jews in Germany is due to the fact that they realized that this great defeat was brought about by our intercession and bringing the United States into the war against them."
The Jews themselves admitted that. It wasn't that the Germans in 1919 discovered that a glass of Jewish blood tasted better than Coca-Cola or Muenschner Beer. There was no religious feeling. There was no sentiment against those people merely on account of their religious belief. It was all political. It was economic. It was anything but religious.
Nobody cared in Germany whether a Jew went home and pulled down the shades and said “Shema' Yisrael” or “Our Father.” No one cared in Germany any more than they do in the United States. Now this feeling that developed later in Germany was due to one thing: that the Germans held the Jews responsible for their crushing defeat, for no reason at all, because World War One was started against Germany for no reason for which they [Germans] were responsible. They were guilty of nothing. Only of being successful. They built up a big navy. They built up world trade.​
 

Hoid

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Oct 15, 2017
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The invasion of Belgium and France was criminal and the complete disregard for humanity that such reckless agression embodies had to be stopped. This was a righteous war ... a horrible one but one, alas, that had to be fought. McCrae seemed to know this, even as he was surrounded by the horror of the Second Battle of Ypres. There is no doubt in his message.
I believe the european powers attacking and colonizing the world was the illegal and criminal part

It was actually refreshing to see them kill each other for a change.
 

Danbones

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Curious Cdn

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"It was actually refreshing to see them kill each other for a change."

What a truly aweful thing to say.
 

Blackleaf

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I believe the european powers attacking and colonizing the world was the illegal and criminal part
It was actually refreshing to see them kill each other for a change.

What international laws did European colonialism breach?

And don't forget that Canada wouldn't exist were it not for European colonialism.