New World War I Memorial: America Looks Back to Move Forward by Anna Mulrine, Christian Science Monitor
It was supposed to be the “war to end all wars,” but World War I did nothing of the sort. Instead, it ushered in a new era of conflict and striving, inspiring women and veterans to take to the streets – in some legendarily violent clashes – to protest for their rights.
It also redrew the borders of the Middle East and inspired its survivors – who had endured trench warfare, chemical weapons attacks, and bodily harm on a previously unthinkable scale – to rethink jingoistic calls to the glory of war.
The new national World War I memorial, the design for which was unveiled in Washington Tuesday, is for an America that is finally ready to confront some of the challenging societal fault lines revealed by the Great War, says the team behind the monument…