May 26 - The Pity of War - A Memorial Day Special Program of Poetry From WWI and WWII

Full Program

Today on Memorial Day we will present a special broadcast to commemorate the 100^th birthday of Benjamin Britten whose great work the Latin Mass for the dead “War Requiem” was commissioned to consecrate the rebuilt Coventry Cathedral that was destroyed by German bombers in World War 11. As result of the destruction and the death of close friends in the first world war, Britten became a pacifist and his “War Requiem” was inspired by the poems of Wilfred Owen who was killed in World War 1, one week before the armistice that ended The Great War, “the war to end wars”.

And as we approach the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of World War 1, many contemporary scholars and historians are pointing to the similarities of the diplomatic failures and entangling alliances back then to the volatile situation in Ukraine where the all-but moribund NATO alliance is facing a possible confrontation with Vladimir Putin's more assertive Russia. And in the far east China and countries with whom the U.S. has alliances like Japan, are facing off over piles of rock and uninhabited islands in the South China sea that could trigger a wider confrontation between the world's leading powers if brinkmanship over territorial disputes erupt and drag the world into a catastrophic conflagration as happened during that fateful August 100 years ago.

Today’s program is called “The Pity of War” and it was performed at the UCLA/Hammer museum in Los Angeles by British stage and screen actress Rosalind Ayers and her husband actor and director Martin Jarvis. They will read a selection of poems from World War 1 and World War 11 that depict the horror and futility of war, not the jingoistic patriotic verse that accompanied these massive tragedies, the first of which ended in an Armistice ninety five years ago today, an armistice in which historians have observed the seeds of World War 11 were sown out of the punitive reparations imposed on Germany by the victorious allies, since at the very same spot the armistice was signed, 22 years later, Adolph Hitler staged the signing of France’s surrender to Germany in World War 11.