In the winter of 1914 during World War I, a brief, remarkable truce was initiated by soldiers in the trenches. In the darkness of Christmas Eve someone raised a Christmas tree above the parapet. It was alight with candles. No one fired. Instead a single voice from the German lines began tentatively singing a Christmas carol. Then someone from the English side joined in. Soldiers on both sides managed a Latin chorus of "Adeste fideles."
When Christmas Day came, there were apparently many small incidents of gifts being exchanged by the troops along that portion of the front. There were soccer games and music and all sorts of unwanted fraternizing—unwanted by the generals. And the soldiers made mutual arrangements to bury their dead out there in no man's land between the two lines of trenches.
Someone said in a letter: "These incidents seem to suggest that educated men have no desire to kill one another; and that, were it not for aggressive national policies, or the fear of them by others, war between civilized peoples would seldom take place." The Boston Globe, February 25, 1988
