Thinking Out LoudOnly the dead have seen the end of war, Plato wrote presciently nearly 2500 years ago. Curious, I asked Google if history records any time without war. The AI answer was: “No, there has never been a year without war in recorded history, as even relatively peaceful periods like the Pax Romana and the Cold War still included numerous smaller conflicts and regional wars.”
One time of hope, soon shattered, came 107 years ago today at 11am, when the guns fell silent across Europe. The Great War, the war to end all wars, was over. Except of course, it didn’t end wars, nor was it the greatest – its death toll was nearly tripled in the next world war, and conflict has continued to blight parts of the world unceasingly ever since. Today Putin – surely the Hitler of the 21st century – is wreaking untold damage to Ukraine and his own nation; plus internecine conflicts in Sudan, Gaza, Myanmar and elsewhere.
What can someone who has never fired a gun (except aged 15 at a fairground – I think I missed all the metal ducks) offer in reflection about the suffering and cost of war? Probably only a combination of grief at the suffering war forces people to endure and gratitude for the sacrifices so many have made on our behalf.
But for me there is real comfort in Isaiah’s prophecy more than 2700 years ago – and a source of hope for unnumbered generations – that
“the wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.”
Of that future, Isaiah also says “nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more”. May it be soon.
This Thinking Out Loud was first published on Facebook.