On Armistice Day, we commemorate the end of history's most consequential war, consider the lessons it holds, and recall a final flight as the guns fell silent.
By JD Breen
Pretium Insights
November 12, 2026
In the small villages of France few families were spared. Monuments in the centers of most every town record the names of "Nos Heros...Mort Pour La France..."
On visits to Paris, Provence, the valleys of the Rhône and the Loire, and the trenches and cemeteries of Verdun, I'm always humbled and mortified by these marble, stone, or metal reminders of an unnecessary, avoidable four-year onslaught that butchered and damned the Lost Generation.
Today marks the 108th anniversary of the Armistice that took effect the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month...the merciful end of the "war to end all wars".
Bloodshed, Debt, and Disillusion
Of the monumental catastrophes of the 20th Century, the suicide of the West known as the First World War - mother of the others - was perhaps the worst...if not for its horrific scale, then for its malignant scope and pervasive impact.
More British, French, and Italian soldiers died in the First World War than in the second. France suffered over one million casualties in the first four months. By the time the United States intervened, the average life expectancy of a soldier at the front was three weeks.
Crackpot politicians, utopian fantasy, and both arms of the military-financial complex joined hands with the last refuge of scoundrels to slaughter almost 20 million souls, bankrupt the economies that buried them, and consign their heirs to a century of bloodshed, debt, and disillusion.
Parental hands that in August 1914 embraced their sons as they boarded trains in Leeds, Leipzig, and Lyons resorted over the next four years to nervously clutching cigarettes, quickly unfolding maps, and apprehensively tracing contours of the Marne, Somme, and Rhine.
Soon thereafter, those fingers would receive telegrams, roll up the maps, uncork whiskey bottles, and clutch black cloth, crosses, and rosary beads.
The Lesson of Sarajevo
As much as we're lectured about the "Lessons of Munich" every time some tin-pot waves a sling-shot, we should recall the Lesson of Sarajevo whenever one of our meddling Caesars encourages us not to mind our own business.
Ignorance increases by the square of the distance, in time and space, from the events under contemplation. Half a world from Washington, DC...on the steppes of Europe, in the Taiwan Strait, or along the eastern Mediterranean...conflicts dating back decades or centuries are exposing arrogant ignorance on the banks of the Potomac.
As Richard Whatley reminded us, those who are unaware of their ignorance will be misled by their knowledge. On that basis, with incoherent "alliances", foolish tripwires, and reckless war guarantees, our illustrious "leaders" are steering us astray.
Unless courses are quickly corrected, the Lesson of Sarajevo implies where we're headed. Prior to and during (and since) the diabolical calamity Europe endured after the summer of 1914, ignorance flourished and mis-applied knowledge abounded.
This article was originally published at Pretium Insights.