By Monte Bohna, PhD, Coordinator, Study Pittsburgh Initiative
One of the most unusual gestures in the cause of
international peace has been recalled with the sound of a tolling bell in the
heart of New York City.
Today, September 21, is International Peace Day, first
declared in 1982 by resolution of the United Nations General Assembly, and “devoted
to commemorating and strengthening the ideals of peace both within and among
all nations and peoples”.
Little noticed in the United States – and agonizingly
distant to the people enduring any of the twenty-nine armed conflicts now
raging around the world – International Peace Day is traditionally marked at
the United Nations Headquarters with a ceremony during which the UN Secretary
General strikes the Japan Peace Bell, the centerpiece of a garden and pagoda
built in the style of a Shinto shrine on the grounds of the UN complex.
The bell was given on behalf of the Japanese people to the
United Nations in 1954, at the initiative of Chiyoji Nakagawa, mayor of
Uwajima. The bronze for the bell,
inscribed in Japanese characters with the phrase “Long live absolute world
peace”, was made from coins collected by children from delegates of the 60
nations represented at the 1951 Paris General Conference of the United Nations.
The bell normally sounds on only one other occasion each year, on Earth Day,
the day of the vernal equinox or first day of spring. In the half-century since the presentation of
the UN bell the World Peace Bell Association, founded by Nakagawa, has endeavored
to raise awareness of the world peace movement by presenting Japanese temple
bells in sixteen countries around the world, including several each in Japan
and the United States.
International Peace Day is not the only commemoration dedicated
to the promotion of peace around the world.
In 1967 Pope Paul VI, inspired by his predecessor John XXIII’s
encyclical Pacem in terris, proclaimed
“World Day of Peace” as a feast day of the Roman Catholic calendar on January
1, a date it shares with another Roman Catholic feast day, the Solemnity of
Mary Holy Mother of God.
However, perhaps the best-known, and certainly the most
widely-observed, commemoration of world peace is tied forever to the “war to
end all wars”. On November 11, 1918, at
the eleventh hour – 11 a.m. – the armistice
negotiated on a rail-siding in the Forest of Compiègne took effect, ending the First World War on the western
front.
In the United States, by proclamation of Pres. Wilson, the
commemoration of November 11 was originally known as “Armistice Day”. From 1938, by Act of Congress, the day was officially
dedicated “to the cause of world peace”.
After the Korean War, the act was amended to rename the day “Veterans
Day”, signifying, in the words of President Eisenhower’s official proclamation
that year, “homage to the veterans of all [American] wars who have contributed
so much to the preservation of this Nation”.
Since that time, the focus of the commemoration has tended to rest on the
specifically military “sacrifices of all those who fought so valiantly”,
replacing - if not quite eclipsing - the hope for universal world peace which
was prominent in the early decades of Armistice Day observance in the U.S.
Conversely, in many countries formerly part of the British
empire, “Remembrance Day” is a generally-observed occasion, marked by the
wearing of red lapel poppies by all generations and walks of life, and by a
minute of silence at the stroke of 11:00.
According to the Manchester
Guardian, the very first minute of silence, on 11 November 1919, brought
the city to a reverential halt:
The tram cars glided
into stillness, motors ceased to cough and fume, and stopped dead…Someone took
off his hat, and with a nervous hesitancy the rest of the men bowed their heads
also. Here and there an old soldier could be detected slipping unconsciously
into the posture of 'attention'. An elderly woman, not far away, wiped her
eyes, and the man beside her looked white and stern. Everyone stood very still…The
hush deepened. It had spread over the whole city and become so pronounced as to
impress one with a sense of audibility. It was a silence which was almost pain
... And the spirit of memory brooded over it all.
Today, students and public servants crossing the lawns of
Queen’s Park and the University of Toronto Student Union, to whom the First
World War is a matter of family stories and grainy old photos, slow their pace
in the name of peace, until the minute’s silence is finally broken by the
carillon of the bells of Soldier’s Tower.
Even London’s Heathrow Airport adjusts its arrivals and departures
before and after 11:00 each year on Remembrance Sunday, in order to preserve
the silence.
Among continental European countries peace commemorations
are, unsurprisingly, often connected in one way or another with the traumatic
events of the first half of the 20th century. In France and Belgium, the November 11th
Armistice is commemorated annually both as a day of hope for future peace and
in memory of the human cost of the two world wars, and in both countries the
role of military forces are highlighted in a way similar to the United
States. Italy follows in the same
tradition, with a focus on military service, except that its “Giorno
dell'Unità Nazionale e delle Forze Armate” is held on November 4, the day of the end of fighting on the Alpine
front, rather than November 11th.
In Germany, Volkstrauertag,
the Day of National Mourning, is dedicated both to German military casualties
and also to victims of violent oppression, is marked by a solemn address from the
ceremonial head of state to the Bundestag, followed by the singing of the
national anthem and I hatt‘ einen Kamaraden, the German
equivalent of “Last Post“ or “Taps“. Instead
of the date of the 1918 Armistice, still a sensitive and contentious memory to
many Germans, Volkstrauertag is observed on the second Sunday before Advent, in
mid-November.
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