After the ‘Tumult and the Shouting Dies’ – Sunday, November 07, 1943
We are reminded today that before another week shall have passed, November 11 will have come and gone again, thus marking, almost unbelievably it seems, a quarter of a century since an Armistice was reached in World War 1.
Armistice Day twenty-five years ago was an occasion for great jubilation, because we thought then that armistice was a synonym for peace. But not many anniversaries had gone by, before festering outbreaks here and there began to teach the more far seeing that Armistice, as technically defined, was but a temporary cessation of hostilities. And while any cessation of hostilities is a relief to any people who are under the pressure of war, we have been made to learn that peace founded merely on exhaustion, and lasting only until strength comes to fight again, is not that peace on earth for which the centuries have searched.
War makes many heroes, and a nation in need finds its valiant defenders—but if peace is to last, heroism must continue beyond war. And even in time of war, when mothers are giving their sons and men are giving themselves, one sometimes sees the seeds of these things which would destroy peace, if we had it—seeds sown by those who want their pound of flesh—or else: Little men with much power who seek to gain their ends at any cost to anyone. Such things would destroy peace—even if we had it. In a British graveyard in France, there is an epitaph that reads: “For your tomorrow, they gave their today.”
This is the essence of sacrifice—the essence of that which has made possible the better things of this world, including peace. And if everyone of us were willing to exercise reasonable restraint—in time of peace, it might not now be necessary for us to look back on a broken armistice. But there have been, and still are, too many who are most eager to give someone else’s tomorrow for their today—too many who have been willing to mortgage the future, their own if necessary, but preferably someone else’s. And so, as another anniversary of Armistice comes and goes, we must remind ourselves again, with a quarter-century as perspective, that if the epitaphs in France and elsewhere are to mean what they should mean, there will be need, in time of peace, for the same heroic effort that wins wars. There must be patriots after “the tumult and the shouting dies,”—after “the captains and the kings depart.” True, there are few medals for the quiet heroism and intelligent restraint and earnest toil of peacetime—but that’s what it will take to keep it here. Let’s not lose it when it comes again.
By Richard L. Evans, spoken from the Tabernacle, Temple Square, Salt Lake City, Sunday, Nov. 7, 1943, over Radio Station KSL and the nationwide Columbia Broadcasting System. Copyright – 1943.
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November 07, 1943
Broadcast Number 0,742