French President Emmanuel Macron made an appeal for peace and co-operation yesterday to some 65 world leaders gathered in Paris to mark the centenary of the armistice in 1918 that ended World War I.
Peace, however, was short-lived and two decades later Nazi Germany invaded its neighbours.
Warning of “ancient demons” and new ideologies that were threatening peace and co-existence, Macron urged his guests to act together to “banish the spectres of climate change, poverty, hunger, illness, all the inequalities and every ignorance”.
“Patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism. Nationalism is its betrayal,” he said.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Russian President Vladimir Putin,
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and US President Donald Trump were among those assembled at the foot of the Arc de Triomphe for the solemn ceremony.
Macron and his wife, Brigitte, Merkel, and King Mohamed VI of Morocco walked side by side up the Champs-Elysees in the rain as bells rang out across Paris to mark the moment at 11am on November 11, 1918 when the guns fell silent on the Western Front.
Trump and Putin arrived separately shortly afterwards.
Putin, who was last to arrive at the ceremony, gave Trump a brief thumbs up as he greeted them.
Minutes earlier, a protester had vaulted barriers on the Champs-Elysee and run towards the US leader’s cortege before a gendarme caught up with her and wrestled her away.
Activist movement Femen claimed the protest on its Twitter account.
Femen leader Inna Schevchenko wrote that “re-establishing world peace with those responsible for ongoing aggression is particularly hypocritical”.
French Interior Minister Christophe Castaner later said Trump’s security had “in no way been threatened”.
After the leaders took their places, Macron reviewed troops and the French army’s bugle call for the dead sounded, followed by a minute of silence and then the French national anthem.
Secondary school students from the Paris suburbs read out extracts from letters and texts by French, British, Chinese, US and German soldiers and civilians recounting their experience of the armistice.
Macron spoke for just under 20 minutes, paying tribute to the dead of World War I, which claimed the lives of 9mn soldiers as well as millions of civilians.
“Each of them is the face of that hope for which a whole generation of youth was willing to die, that of a world given over to peace, a world where friendship between peoples would overcome warlike passions,” he said.
Franco-German co-operation and the construction of the European Union were what embodied that hope in Europe, he added, a day after his historic joint visit with Merkel to the spot where both the armistice and France’s surrender to German in World War II were signed.
“History is at times threatening to return to its tragic course, and to compromise the heritage of peace that we had thought was sealed with the blood of our ancestors,” Macron warned.
“Let us once again take this oath of nations, to place peace above all, because we know its price, we know its weight, we know what it demands,” he urged.
Merkel’s attendance drew some criticism from the far-right opposition back home.
“I think it is wrong to rewrite history and to retrospectively take part in the victory celebration of the Allies,” Alexander Gauland, head of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) told German TV broadcaster ZDF (see accompanying report).
“But we can’t switch sides to support the victors after the historical fact and start walking through the Arc de Triomphe alongside Mister Macron,” he said.
Yesterday’s ceremony ended with the relighting of the flame on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier beneath the Arc de Triomphe and the laying of a wreath.
Most of the leaders – though not Trump – attended a peace forum summoned by Macron to commemorate the end of the conflict.
Trump visited a US war cemetery outside Paris, after calling off a similar visit the previous day due to what the White House said were weather and logistical issues amid rain across much of northern France.
Elsewhere, ceremonies in New Zealand, Australia, India, Hong Kong and Myanmar began a day of remembrance services around the world for a conflict that involved millions of troops from colonised countries in Asia and Africa.
The leaders of Commonwealth nations – whose forces were deployed under British command 100 years ago – also delivered messages of peace.
“This was a war in which India was not directly involved yet our soldiers fought world over, just for the cause of peace,” Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Twitter.
“For our tomorrows, they gave their today,” Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison told people gathered at a ceremony in Canberra.
British Prime Minister Theresa May and Prince Charles, standing in for Queen Elizabeth, attended a separate remembrance event in London where thousands of well-wishers also paid their respects to fallen soldiers.
Leaders and representatives of international organisations at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris to attend a ceremony as part of commemorations marking the 100th anniversary of the November 11, 1918 Armistice, ending World War I.
