WAR: Why do we ever think it's a solution?
I dream of giving birth to a child who will ask, ‘Mother, what was war?’
Eve Merriam
This Sunday, as we all know, marks the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, arguably the cruellest and most destructive war mankind has ever embarked upon. Frankly, at no point in my life have I been able to grasp the notion that killing or maiming another human being was a good way to promote the laudable aim of peace on earth. Those stark black and white photographs of gaunt young men dying in the trenches, and the pictures of horses, such faithful, noble animals dying in agony on the battlefields… I’ve been haunted by them all my life. However you look at it, war is surely one of the most absurd and tragic acts that us allegedly clever two-legged ones have ever come up with.
As someone who was born as the Battle of Britain thundered overhead, I still twitch and jump at sudden loud noises – or the sharp spit of gunfire. Even the beauty of fireworks makes Guy Fawkes night as much of a problem for me as for cats, dogs, horses and a host of other unlucky quadrupeds. Never mind locking up your animals – keep your nervous humans behind closed doors.
When I was a child, I remember hearing the grown-ups use the word ‘war’ a lot. I clearly didn’t understand what it meant. I thought they were talking about a ‘wall’ and so in my early memory ‘war’ was a high, grey stone wall that edged the kitchen garden. Perhaps that was, at some level, an appropriate metaphor for a thing so inexplicable.
The very notion, the very idea that to go out and kill another human being, which is called murder in any other context and punishable by death in many countries (what does that achieve?) or a lifetime in prison (which does not always educate wisely) seems to me to be ludicrous. The list of the great, the good and the wise who have argued against war and those who have been mocked, pilloried or indeed imprisoned for their views would fill a tome or two. Yet somehow or other, we persist in this vain and ultimately self-destructive folly.
Now, almost two decades into the twenty-first century, it isn’t so much a question of why we do it, but how we stop doing it. The arguments in favour of war are predicated on unforgiveness of the past and mind-numbing fear of the future – but seldom do they deal with the present moment. That’s left to the unfortunate victims of warfare.
I’d be dishonest if I said I have no truck with any of it, since every member of my family and all those who’ve been closest to me throughout my life, have been soldiers at one time or another. Including my only son. Indeed, when he was but a sprog of twelve or so, bearing in mind family traditions, I asked him if he wanted to join the army one day. Ultimately he did so. But I think his twelve year old self had a wise answer to my question when he replied, ‘I’d like to do the training, but I wouldn’t want to fight.’ The training, I might add, has been hugely beneficial to him nowadays as a journalist and adventure athlete. As indeed the lessons of courage, patience and endurance can be to every young man or woman.
To be deeply grateful to the armed forces for these qualities and the sacrifices they, and their families, have made is imperative. But to require those sacrifices ever to be endlessly repeated, makes me shout, ‘Not now, not ever in my name’. I long for the day when I can pay my taxes not for war, but for peace.
Given a nature inclined to optimism and faith in the essential goodness of human beings, I can only see one aspect of war that gives it any nobility; and that is the extraordinary way that so many men and women, whether civilians or soldiers, manage to display heroism, endurance and even good humour in the grimmest of circumstances.
Perhaps, as the poet Carl Sandberg wrote, ‘Sometime they’ll give a war and nobody will come.’ I wonder how many of us will ever see that day.