My grandfather rarely spoke about the War. I believe it was because what he’d seen and lived through was so awful words could not describe it, nor hearts sustain it.
Wars are often thought of as inevitable. A permanent affliction of humanity like the seasons. That famous soldier and President U.S Grant urged preparation for war as he felt;
“War never changes. War is like winter and winter is coming.”
Ulysses S Grant
But other voices speak of war as crime;
“Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.”
Ernest Hemingway, 1946
At times the sheer amount of death that war entails makes a mockery of either side being a winner. Henri Barbusse described such an encounter;
“Two armies that fight each other is like one large army that commits suicide.”
We commemorate the dead and the heroes that return but somehow the wounded, the injured and the vile process of dying and its horror is rarely captured adequately, but Captain Edwin Vaughan came close when he wrote;
“The cries of the wounded had much diminished now, and as we staggered down the road, the reason was only too apparent, for the water was right over the tops of the shell-holes.”
War is about killing and any method that achieves that end, whatever the cost is too often deemed okay.
“I wish those people who talk about going on with this war whatever it costs could see the soldiers suffering from mustard gas poisoning. Great mustard-coloured blisters, blind eyes, all sticky and stuck together, always fighting for breath, with voices a mere whisper, saying that their throats are closing and they know they will choke.”
Nurse Vera Brittain, 1933
Conflict can occur when two argue and disagree but when language fails its purpose then we have war as Margaret Atwood so succinctly put it;
“War is what happens when language fails.”
We have had two World wars and they are a part of our history taught in schools. But it is impossible to educate any of us about future wars, their nature and their outcome. The horror is too great, the loss of life too terrible to convey to young minds but one of the greatest minds considered it deeply and made this heart stopping prediction;
“I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”
Albert Einstein
Of course, people fight wars for reasons and Tolkien gave a powerful reasons;
“War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.”
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers
However even war that begins with reasoned justification and thoughtful serious reflection and reluctance can conclude in the mindless celebration of mass murder;
“It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.”
Voltaire
“There are perhaps many causes worth dying for, but to me, certainly, there are none worth killing for.”
Albert Dietrich, Army Gi, Pacifist Co: The World War II Letters of Frank Dietrich and Albert Dietrich
I like the way Dietrich makes this clear distinction between being prepared to die but not to kill. These letters written between these identical twins one a soldier and the other a pacifist have been compiled into a wonderful book about war and life.
The specific reasons for a war of course will have very little effect on the suffering of those who die as a consequence as Mahatma Gandhi pointed out;
“What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or in the holy name of liberty or democracy?”
Margaret Atwood suggested in her earlier quote that war is a failure of language whereas John Steinbeck felt it was a more fundamental failing than that;
“All war is a symptom of man's failure as a thinking animal.”
John Steinbeck
And our choice to go to war has consequences not just on those who fight or are killed, because that very choice shapes the life we all lead in endless ways.
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.”
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Perhaps the most horrific thing about war is that it recalibrates all that we normally value as humans.
“Consider human ignorance and inconsistency. A man who kills another man is punished by execution, but a military genius who kills one hundred thousand of his fellow creatures is immortalized as a hero. One man steals a small sum of money and is imprisoned as a thief. Another pillages a whole country and is honoured as a patriot and conqueror. A single falsehood brings reproach and censure, but the wiles of politicians and diplomats excite the admiration and praise of a nation. Consider the ignorance and inconsistency of mankind. How darkened and savage are the instincts of humanity!”
‘Abdu’l-Bahá, The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 287
I am not sure why thoughts of war have come to me at this time of a pandemic sweeping the world. But doesn’t war seem particularly pointless when humanity is trying to marshal its defences against a virus that is 0.000125 mm across and not even a living thing? Fundamentally does this not remind us that we are one family and if we cannot work together for the best of humanity then we are less than the most inferior of us all.
