A hundred years since the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. The end of the Great War as it was till it became the First World War since it had not really ended in 1918. So what were we celebrating in fact?
The imagery chosen itself, I feel, was very eloquent. The Chancellor of Germany and the President of the Republic of France walking to the famous or infamous or both railway carriage where the original Armistice had been signed, to sit beside each other for the photo and sign something again, symbolically. What exactly?
A glum faced Chancellor Angela Merkel, on the way out after having driven the EU to the brink of collapse even perhaps through her eternal procrastination and kicking that can down the bloody road interminably till it has now started to wobble dangerously on the edge of the cliff.
The President of the Republic of France, Emmanuel Macron looking rather insipid beside her, having failed utterly to convince the lady beside him of his proposals for the EU which could save it, since they were met with her persistent and stubborn Niens all the time to everything and anything that could reform the hapless Union. Not to mention his failure to achieve anything at home apart from growing dissent and anger which may well translate into something very ugly in the coming Euro elections.
So these two figures were of necessity the ones symbolising the end of that terrible war. Or at least of the first part of it. Because as they walked away we were reminded by the BBC that this is the first time a German Chancellor has walked down this path since Adolf Hitler when the French signed their surrender to him in the second half of the horrendous European wars, in that very same carriage. Whoops. Hardly an auspicious association though perhaps a pertinent one.
The whole show was very depressing and perhaps this ominous little bit of it should have been avoided. It can?t help auguring ill.