{"id":46023,"date":"2014-08-04T19:11:24","date_gmt":"2014-08-04T19:11:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/?guid=0225b9a19c7c6b8eb5ba184fe9b428ce"},"modified":"2014-08-04T19:11:24","modified_gmt":"2014-08-04T19:11:24","slug":"speech-pms-words-at-st-symphorien-cemetery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/?p=46023","title":{"rendered":"Speech: PM’s words at St Symphorien cemetery"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

One hundred years ago, young men across this continent packed their kit bag, kissed their sweethearts goodbye and prepared to go to war.<\/p>\n

I think of the millions of mothers and fathers who would have stood on their front door-step, waving their sons off, not knowing if they would ever see them again.<\/p>\n

Every war is cruel.<\/p>\n

But this war was unlike any other.<\/p>\n

The unspeakable carnage, the unbearable loss, the almost unbelievable bravery.<\/p>\n

One hundred years on, it is right that we meet here \u2013 and around the world \u2013 to remember.<\/p>\n

We remember the sheer scale of World War One. A conflict that stretched from the Western Front to the deserts of the Middle East; from the plains of Poland to the frozen mountains of Austria; touching \u2013 and ending \u2013 millions upon millions of lives. <\/p>\n

Its legacy still affects us today – good and bad. <\/p>\n

We remember the reasons behind this conflict. Too often it has been dismissed as a pointless war, fought by people who didn\u2019t know why they were fighting. But that is wrong.<\/p>\n

These men signed up to prevent the domination of a continent, to preserve the principles of freedom and sovereignty that we cherish today.<\/p>\n

Perhaps above all \u2013 in this, the centenary of World War One \u2013 we must remember the human stories conveyed in the poems, literature and pictures that still entrance us.<\/p>\n

History is not shaped by invisible forces, but by millions of individuals who plan, and work, and love, and fight, and destroy things and build them again.<\/p>\n

History is human stories.<\/p>\n

And so we remember them:<\/p>\n

The teenagers who fought in the fields around here \u2013 terrified and missing home.<\/p>\n

The men who laid down their lives for their friends.<\/p>\n

The veterans who were never the same again.<\/p>\n

The families who bore those silent wounds.<\/p>\n

The place at the table that was never filled, the marriages that never happened, the babies that were never born.<\/p>\n

This was a war with an immense human cost \u2013 and we must always, always remember that no matter how busy things are.<\/p>\n

So much of modern life is a race to what comes next, a race to the future.<\/p>\n

But we are all in a long chain of events; the inheritors of the fights that were won before us; the stewards of the world that the next generation will inherit.<\/p>\n

In shaping that future it is vital that we look to the past.<\/p>\n

Here on the continent of Europe we saw not the war to end all wars, but the precursor to another desperate and violent conflict just 2 decades later.<\/p>\n

We should never fail to cherish the peace between these nations and never underestimate the patient work it has taken to build that peace.<\/p>\n

So, 100 years on, it is right that collectively we stop; we pause; and we re-pledge this for the next 100 years:<\/p>\n

We will never forget. We will always remember them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

David Cameron spoke at a commemorative event in St Symphorien cemetery to mark 100 years since Britain entered the First World War.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46023"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46023\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}