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Illustration
(L, P)
James, in this passage, calls upon all of us to make peace. One of the things he doesn't mention in his reasons for warfare is its attraction to so many people. Robert E. Lee once said, "It is a good thing war is so terrible, else we should become too fond of it." Santayana wrote,
There are panegyrists of war who say that without a periodical bleeding a race decays and loses its manhood. Experience is directly opposed to this shameless assertion. It is war that wastes a nation's wealth, chokes its industries, kills its flower, narrows its sympathies, condemns it to be governed by adventurers, and leaves the puny, deformed, and unmanly to breed the next generation. Internecine war, foreign and civil, brought about the greatest set-back which the life of reason has ever suffered. It is the unmutilated race, fresh from the struggle with nature (in which the best survive, while in war it is often the best that perish), that descends victoriously into the arena of nations.
Until we sense that horror for war, it will continue to be a reality. It is not enough, however, to be a war-hater and a peace-lover. Our call -- echoed in James -- is to be peace-makers. That happens as, in Christ, we work for the elimination of poverty, injustice, and bigotry and all the other things that provide the breeding ground for war.
-- Aber
James, in this passage, calls upon all of us to make peace. One of the things he doesn't mention in his reasons for warfare is its attraction to so many people. Robert E. Lee once said, "It is a good thing war is so terrible, else we should become too fond of it." Santayana wrote,
There are panegyrists of war who say that without a periodical bleeding a race decays and loses its manhood. Experience is directly opposed to this shameless assertion. It is war that wastes a nation's wealth, chokes its industries, kills its flower, narrows its sympathies, condemns it to be governed by adventurers, and leaves the puny, deformed, and unmanly to breed the next generation. Internecine war, foreign and civil, brought about the greatest set-back which the life of reason has ever suffered. It is the unmutilated race, fresh from the struggle with nature (in which the best survive, while in war it is often the best that perish), that descends victoriously into the arena of nations.
Until we sense that horror for war, it will continue to be a reality. It is not enough, however, to be a war-hater and a peace-lover. Our call -- echoed in James -- is to be peace-makers. That happens as, in Christ, we work for the elimination of poverty, injustice, and bigotry and all the other things that provide the breeding ground for war.
-- Aber
