“Silent Night, Holy Night” as told by Walter Cronkite.
The 1900’s, the final century of the recent millennium, brought unprecedented possibilities and promise.
The children of these hundred years would see more improvement in the human condition than ever before in the world’s history.
Advances in medicine, science, and industry would all but eradicate disease, extend human life, open a dialogue among the peoples of the earth, and lift them into the vast reaches of space.
But these hardly seemed like possibilities as the Christmas of 1914 drew near.
The nations of Europe were at war. Anxious to expand and defend their borders, they summoned their best and brightest to the battlefront. Young men answered by the millions.
A nineteen-year-old German boy left his job in London to enlist in the German army. English boys working and studying in Hamburg and Paris returned to London, put on their uniforms, and went back to fire upon former friends.
Secretary of War, Lord Kirchener, expanded the British army overnight by allowing schoolmates to enlist together.
The tragedy of these battalions was no more evident than at Somme, France. Hundreds of villages on both sides lost almost all their young men in a single battle. The little paybook that every British soldier carried included a last will and testament. Thousands of these booklets were collected from the bodies of young boys, many reading simply, “I leave everything to my mother.”
With hardly a backward glance, the promise of youth was poured into the blind and futile aggression known as the Great War, World War 1.
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