Europe’s Militarism Without Its Mask
Exactly 100 years before this week’s military parade in D.C., a 1925 New York Times Magazine article analyzed why military parades, pomp, and circumstance were so much more omnipresent in Europe than the U.S.
For example, the French have long held their annual Bastille Day military parade. President Donald Trump attended the 2017 edition, which is reportedly what inspired him to request a similar parade here in America.
Back in 1925, the journalist H.I. Brock wrote:
Since Europe’s history began, Europe has been a camp of armed nations. She had her jobs done by soldiers in the days of Caesar – in the days of Charlemagne and the Crusades and the Hundred Years War and the war that we call the World War – and down to this very year of grace, 1925.
By contrast, in the U.S., not so much.
But for the country we live in, we are heir to a virgin wilderness, not a battlefield trodden and bloodstained with the wars of many centuries. Our great fight has been with nature, not with our fellow man… Soldiering has never been an ever-present fact of life and general duty with us.
We have had our wars and we have fought. But when our wars were over, we have had no use for armies. And we have promptly got rid of them, just as unceremoniously as we did after the last war. This Europe could not do.
Back to 2025. This weekend’s parade is ostensibly to commemorate the Army’s 250th anniversary, though many speculate it’s not a coincidence that it’s also being held on Trump’s 79th birthday.
The last large-scale military parade in D.C. took place in 1991, titled the National Victory Celebration and held to mark the end of the Gulf War.
Europe’s Militarism Without Its Mask: Her Soldiers Are Regarded As Servants of the Public and Martial Pomp Is a Habit
Published: Sunday, June 14, 1925