VE Day

Some local decorations

Quite a few houses round about have been impressively decorated with flags and bunting for the seventy-fifth anniversary of VE Day.  In general, this is not the Victory Day we had envisaged, as we find ourselves engaged in a different kind of war with a new and different enemy.  But now is as good a time as any to recall with gratitude the qualities and sacrifices that won the Second World War for peace and justice against fetters and tyranny.

Here is the address made to the nation by King George VI at 9 p.m. on the 8th May, 1945.  (The full transcript can be read here: <https://www.royal.uk/king-george-vis-ve-day-broadcast>

Now that the murderers are put away
(At cost of the world's hope), a moment comes,
Not feverish with war-cries, flags and drums,
Not terrible with terror and dismay,
Not beautiful (the lovely hope being dead),
Not hopeful, therefore, but... the time arrives... 

[...] 

Man must not make less beauty than the flower.
Youth, given back from slaughter, has an hour.
Lighten us, Life: shine, planet in our east. 

—from 'A Moment Comes', by John Masefield (then Poet Laureate): The Times, 8 May 1945, p.7.