War To End

At 11 a.m. tomorrow -- the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month -- we will mark the moment at which in 1918 the transaction ending the War to End War was achieved. For years, we celebrated Nov. 11 as Armistice Day. Now it's called Veterans' Day. Fine. War did not end. So it's fitting to honor those who have sacrificed in subsequent state-sanctioned bloodshed. And tomorrow there will go on the market a book that has much to say about sacrifice and bloodshed and why wars endure. That book is To America: Personal Reflections of a Historian, by Stephen Ambrose (Simon and Schuster, 288 pages, $24)

NEW YORK -- World War I was called the "war to end all wars." World War II proved it wasn't. Korea was a "police action," not a war. Vietnam was a tunnel, from whose end shone a perpetual light that never got closer but blinded us nonetheless. The current conflict may well end up being the "war without end" (WWE). President Bush says that we are already at war, and Congress eagerly has surrendered to him its constitutional right and duty to declare it. Everyone in a position to commit our youth, money and integrity to the fight seems to agree that the war has begun, although no one can name the nation or "axis" of enemies whom we must defeat to end it. The theater of operations appears to be the planet.

BOSTON -- The news crawled across the bottom of the screen as a surreal footnote to the president's speech on Iraq. President offers federal help for victims of sniper shooting ... Oliver North is 59 ... Audiences hunger for Hannibal as Red Dragon tops box office ... Sometime between the news of soccer players unionizing and the Nobel Prize for medicine, the president made his case against a "homicidal dictator." He warned the country that without action against Iraq, the United States would "resign itself to fear."

The end of the "War to End All Wars" will be remembered with an Armistice Day Celebration and Apple Festival on Sunday at a small Odenton church, Epiphany Episcopal, that is believed to be the only World War I military chapel in the nation. Its congregation of 150 families will use the occasion, from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m., to launch a $700,000 restoration of what originally was Epiphany Chapel and Church House, where young doughboys were welcomed in the spring of 1918 before they were sent off to the front in France.

James Clark Jr., who served in the Maryland legislature, was born in Howard County in 1918 and still lives here. This is an excerpt from his memoir, "Jim Clark Soldier, Farmer, Legislator," reprinted with permission. I was born at approximately eight o'clock in the morning of 19 December 1918 in the southwest bedroom at Keewaydin. This was just a few weeks after the Armistice that ended World War I and in the middle of the great flu epidemic, that killed 25,000,000 people worldwide during the winter of 1918-1919.

WAR IS AN option in the Middle East. It is favored by many at a great distance who would not fight it, and by some who would. What is not available is a decisive war, a war to end wars, a war to settle the issue, or an unconditional surrender. Only a war that would lead to a peace, as most do, or that would lead to still more wars, as many do. Israel is not going away. After a half-century, it is stronger, more confident than ever. Its right and need to exist are not in question. Peace only became an option a decade ago, when the Arab world belatedly allowed the Palestinians to accept that reality.

Americans' patriotism was running so high during World War II that women saved and donated bacon fat to the government so that it could be used to make explosives. More than 16 million Americans put on military uniforms during the war. That feeling of pride can be found across the country, as evidenced by a grass-roots campaign to raise money and awareness for a World War II Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, the first national memorial of its kind. Groundbreaking for 7.4-acre site is scheduled for Nov. 10, the day before Veterans Day. In Southwest Baltimore, Loudon Park Funeral Home has filled its lobby with 800 pieces of wartime memorabilia.

Veterans losing their dueThe guns finally fell silent at 11 a.m., Nov. 11, 1918, but not before a generation of European men was slaughtered. Although our nation's involvement was shorter than other countries', the "war to end all wars" left a painful mark on our people and culture.World War I touched most of the families in my hometown of Milwaukee. While many people knew of a doughboy who had made the ultimate sacrifice, everyone could see how the war ravaged those who did return.The usual way to describe veterans forever unnerved by combat experience was, "and after that, he was never quite right."

I HAVE TO confess that I was somewhat anti-military during my formative years.I say "somewhat" because I've not always supported the war, but I've always backed those who fought.I speak especially of Vietnam (although Grenada also bothered me). During the Vietnam War, my childhood fascination with miniature soldiers and tanks engaged in fantasy combat dissipated as the real combat raged on my television screen.Things got worse when the Army drafted one of my brothers. His heart sank when the notice came.

LONDON -- Eighty years later, Douglas Thomson can still summon up the smells and sounds of World War I.The military messenger who once ferried orders to British troops dug into trenches along the Western Front is now, at 100, one of the few survivors of a conflict that ended the old order and shaped modern Europe."