"Ten years ago the American people reversed its national tradition against entangling alliances and participation in the political struggles of Europe in order, as it is fondly believed, to make the world safe for democracy, safeguard the rights of small nations and the principle of self-determination... If the causes and justifications for our intervention were based on facts, some evidence of their truth ought now, after ten years, to be apparent." The Versailles Treaty insisted that Germany must have no W.W. I veterans organizations or conventions of any kind; 18 years later the Nazi leadership in Germany thought that was all a bunch of blarney and so the War Veterans Associations was formed. This article tells about their first convention (July 30, 1934).
Almost twenty years after the First World War reached it's bloody conclusion, Americans collectively wondered as they began to think about all the empty chairs assembled around so many family dinner tables, "Do the French care at all that we sacrificed so much for them? Do they still remember that we were there?" In response to this question, an American veteran who remained in France, submitted the attached article to The American Legion Monthly and answered those questions with a resounding "YES".
Click here to read an article by a grateful Frenchman who was full of praise for the bold and forward-thinking manner in which America entered the First World War. The book review of Winston Churchill's 1929 tome, The Aftermath:
"All too frequently Mr. Churchill passes lightly over the story he alone can tell and repeats the stories that other men have told."...[Yet] no one who wants to understand the world he lives in can afford to miss The Aftermath. Would that all contemporary statesmen were one-tenth as willing as Mr. Churchill to tell what they know."
More about Winston Churchill can be read here.
Read the thoughts of one W.W. I veteran who regrets having gone to war... "Second only to the part played by Canada on the battlefields of Europe is the magnificent spirit in which the dominion has dealt with the returned soldier and with the fallen soldier and his dependents. From the time the war ended to the present, Canada has led the rest of the world in looking after ex-service men."
"When the men of the Dominion returned from Europe they originally got three months' post-discharge pay at their discharge rank. On second thought this was changed early in 1919 to a war gratuity basis, as follows: For one year's overseas service or more, four months' pay and allowances; for three years' service or more, six months' pay and allowances. From these amounts deducted any sum paid out under the post-discharge system which had earlier prevailed. The men who had seen service in Canada only were not forgotten and received checks for one month's pay and allowances for each complete year of service in the army." The attached magazine article is for any sentimental sap who has never crossed the water to walk wander pensively upon that ground where the blood once flowed between the years 1914 and 1918. It concerns the July 14, 1936 reunion at Verdun where many of the old combatants of the Great War were:
"Called together at historic Fort Douaumont, captured and retaken a score of times during those dark days of 1916, to swear a solemn oath to work for peace, the disillusioned survivors of their father's folly found Verdun changed, yet unchanged and changeless."
Click here to read another article concerning peace-loving veterans of World War One. | 
