+JMJ+
There are things in this life that are way more important than marketing and sales, which we preach and practice as Catholics, and this weekend is a perfect example of this.
It’s Remembrance Day tomorrow here in Canada. The date has the same title in the U.K., too, and throughout the King’s Commonwealth.
In the U.S. they call it Veterans Day.
The discrepancy isn’t a huge deal for a Canucklehead like myself, because we’re honouring the troops. I have a few war-related stories under my belt from journalism days, experienced from the comfort of air-conditioned TV studios which were always far, far away from the frontlines, but I’ll save those for another time.
Remembrance Day itself is closely tied to the end of the First World War.
At the 11th hour, on the 11th day, of the 11th month in 1918 …
That bloody conflict came to an end.
Yes, there is such a thing as a “Just War,” and that would be a natural topic for a Catholic marketer like myself to dive into here and now, but I’ll take a different road.
Instead, I want to focus on the cruelty of war with some copy from 1896 …
It’s by the British poet Alfred Edward Housman, taken from his poem “A Shropshire Lad”:
On the idle hill of summer,
Sleepy with the flow of streams,
Far I hear the steady drummer
Drumming like a noise in dreams.
Far and near and low and louder
On the roads of earth go by,
Dear to friends and food for powder,
Soldiers marching, all to die.
East and west on fields forgotten
Bleach the bones of comrades slain,
Lovely lads and dead and rotten;
None that go return again.
Far the calling bugles hollo,
High the screaming fife replies,
Gay the files of scarlet follow:
Woman bore me, I will rise.
Lest we forget.
Stay holy my friends and God bless.
Vic
The Marketing Trad
P.S. Make sure to pray for all our servicemen, for all our military vets, and the souls of those who gave their lives for God and country.
P.P.S. I’m usually a strict adherent to the direct marketing tradition of always selling something in your marketing – it’s one of my 11-Teen rules – but not today. Yes, there are always exceptions to rules (except for the 10 Commandments), and I make exceptions when it comes to certain days.