Armistice Day

On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, the guns fell silent.

After four years of running three shifts around the clock, the awful corpse factory in western Europe finally shuddered to a halt on this day in 1918. Western civilization wasted little time in proving we'd learned nothing from the experience.

The Odious Wilson stuck his oar in the peace process and mucked things up, as was his wont, and the eventual Treaty of Versailles has mostly gone down in history as an example of how not to treat a defeated foe. Either plow the ground with salt and sell the population into bondage, or give them a magnanimous hand up, but don't leave a beaten enemy to nurse grudges while inflicting gratuitous and punitive punishments on them.

(That postwar DWM .30-caliber Luger I've been playing with? That's an artifact of the Versailles Treaty. So are short-barreled "Bolo" Mauser pistols. See, if they had 4" or longer barrels and were chambered in 9mm, they'd have been "arms" and Germany would have been forbidden to manufacture or export them. But with a 3.99" or shorter barrel and chambered in .30 Luger or .30 Mauser? Well, those aren't "arms" and go 'head and knock yourself out, Germany.)
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