War and Peace – Is a Genuine Survival Ethic Possible?

October 15, 1967
Plainfield

War and Peace – Is a Genuine Survival Ethic Possible?

“Death belongs to God alone. By what right do men touch that unknown thing?” That was the protest of the good Bishop in LES MISERABLES after his visit with a man condemned to death. But I guess that’s one of the differences between fact and fiction – even great fiction. In fact, men have always pre-empted the right to assign their fellows to death. War is the most terrifying and formidable of the ways men and women of the human family willingly, even eagerly, accept death in war as necessary to accomplish goals. In history, wars have been between tribes, kingdoms, nations, and clusters of allied nations.

War and Peace, is a genuine survival ethic possible? In attempting to wrestle with the question, inevitably there is repeated the old cliché that there always have been wars, there always will. The Vietnam War drags on with its hourly cost of human lives and suffering. Seemingly there is little measurable effect of all the efforts of those who believe that negotiations are possible if we would halt the bombing and be willing to recognize the National Liberation Front as a party in peace talks. Every effort to mount a peace campaign seems to cause a response of further escalation by our government. You know my belief about this damnable struggle. [CJW note: Confirm its origins wrong & its escalations; vague & contradictory in its goals] Perhaps all that can be done is to continue to assert the truth as one sees it, even when the military seems to have its way. Dissent may still be acceptable. Certainly the ranks are growing of those who dissent and want negotiations now. Yet there is no assurance that those who believe peace is possible have any influence with the President compared with those who believe that continued, escalating war is necessary at even the awful daily cost. But silence about this wrong war would be a comfort to those who want it prolonged and intensified.

Yet the Vietnam war, costly as it is, is but the palest representation of what will prevail should the widening war bring in direct participation of the U.S.S.R. or Mainland China against us.

War has always been cruel. 2500 years ago, the Hebrew farmer and city dweller killed by a sword-thrust by the Assyrian invader who swept down like a wolf on the fold, were just as dead as the Japanese children incinerated at Nagasaki. Atomic deaths are quicker, perhaps, But we must remember that any geographically-confined war, such as Viet-nam or the Middle East, can spread like a forest fire. Destruction could quickly become global. Lives not destroyed by the fusion blast or radiation may die from germ or chemical weapons. At stake are not just armies and navies, but the planet itself. Man now has available the forces of fire and fever to destroy people and planet and possibly every living organism.

No catalogue of horrors seems to impress us sufficiently with the unmitigated nonsense and moral stupidity implicit in the new weapons of war. Just this one item, published three years ago (quoted, UNESCO COURIER, Aug-Sept 67, p. 3):

“An American reporter, Mr. James Polk vividly described a nerve gas plant at Newport, Indiana.
“The killer chemical which emerges from the plant’s ovens and chilling chamber is nerve gas. A stealthy assassin, it is odorless, tasteless, and virtually invisible. A drop breathed or soaked into skin can be fatal.
“At the end of this unique assembly line, laced with 40 miles of pipes, the nerve gas is poured into rockets, land mines, and artillery shells – destination secret .... The plant has now been in operation twenty-four hours a day for three years (in 1964).
“A U.S. Army handbook says that this gas can cause death within four minutes and it is so potent that, delivered only on a small scale, its effect can approach that of nuclear weapons. The gas is very cheap; the Newport plant costs only $3.5 million per year to run.”

I’m not sure that such terror items stir us to change our ways of thinking about war. But we ought to take to heart the words of Abraham Maslow, “To be untroubled when one should be troubled can be a sign of sickness. Sometimes smug people have to be scared into their wits.” (p. 196, TOWARD A PSYCHOLOGY OF BEING)

What is a genuine survival ethic? Without any inclination or need to spend your time on ethical theories, let me be as terse as possible. By a survival ethic, I mean one that will provide a political, economic, and communications climate in the world which will prevent the exchange of missiles, fire, and poison on a scale that will destroy the peoples of the world. By genuine, I mean an ethic which does not require that any nation or culture be deprived of the values it cherishes and believes necessary. No genuine survival ethic would provide for the end of our individual liberties and civil rights. No 1984, “Big Brother” overrule could constitute a tolerable survival ethic for us. But neither must we assume that our choices must also be those of other nations. Some will, as some have, choose varieties of what is called communism. Other systems will evolve which will not fit into the political definitions of today.

A genuine survival ethic for our world will allow for such choices in the framework of world peace through world law. Our ability to reason must be applied to the problems; we must open our feelings to the pain of people’s needs everywhere; and we must never cease to re-evaluate ongoing efforts in the light of experience and consequences.

There have been at least two communication areas where we must be more alert to what is happening, or we may find ourselves so far down the road to global war that there can be no turning back. We must penetrate the jargon, and understand the forces that are a hazard to world peace.

There is a need to penetrate the jargon of the military establishments (for a more complete statement, see the article by Philip Noel-Baker in UNESCO COURIER, Aug-Sept 67). Abraham Lincoln’s philosophy has been summarized, “In any great public crisis, find the truth and put it into plain words before the people. Then give them time and they will vindicate you.” But when obscure phrases and terms are used which fail to indicate the devastating nature of military proposals, then there is need for each of us to translate into plain words in order to test proposals with clearer reason and deeper feeling.

Examples: the atomic bomb which destroyed Hiroshima is called a “nominal bomb.” Somehow the feeling comes through that nominal is minimum or almost a light punishment. But Hiroshima was hit by a bomb with the equivalent of 20,000 tons of TNT. The military describes this as a 20 kiloton bomb – and the dimension of 20,000 tons of TNT seems to have become blurred.

This becomes more vague when talking about the megaton bomb. The first H bomb we set off at Bikini atoll was 15 megatons. The U.S.S.R.'s H bomb (1961) was 60 megatons. Megaton sounds scientific and organized, but a megaton is the equivalent of 1 million tons of TNT. When one comprehends that our experimental bomb at Bikini atoll exploded with a force equal to 15 million tons of TNT and the Russian-tested H bomb was the equivalent of 60 million tons of TNT; and then remembers that the Allies dropped a total of only 1.2 million tons of chemical explosives during the 6 years of war and destroyed cities, industries, population and railway systems, some elementary realizations should come through. There would be no place on the continents to hide when the great powers began to exchange their missiles.

We need to penetrate the jargon in other instances:

Much is said of “tactical battlefield atomic weapons.” But the majority are as powerful as the Hiroshima bomb and such romantic names as the Davy Crockett and Bazooka should not lead us into overlooking their power to destroy whole areas, not just gain tactical advantages in wars limited to soldiers.

When one reads military staff talk about “counter force strategy,” does one always understand that this means the destruction of enemy cities and the eradication of populations?

Or that “counter-value strategy” is the policy of “directing strategic nuclear attack not on military targets but on centers of population and industry?”

Or that “bonus kills” refers to those who die as a result of radiation poisoning from fall-out as compared to those who are immediately killed by blast and firestorm?

One megadeath is the death of a million people; megacorpse, one million dead bodies; “overkill,” the power to destroy the entire population of any enemy country more than once.

We must penetrate the jargon in order to feel what the words can mean.

In addition, we must understand the forces, deliberate and unwitting which combine to continue the enormous build-up of military power and consequently, reducing to a trickle, comparatively, available money for great needs on the civilian domestic scene.

When President Eisenhower delivered his last speech as President, January 17, 1961, this General-President whose entire career up to being elected President was in the military, warned against a new development in American political life which never before had existed to such a degree. He identified it as the “conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry ... the total influence is felt in every statehouse, every office of the federal government.” He further said, “only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can so manage this complex that security and liberty may prosper together.”

In 1963, according to then-President Kennedy, defense, space or atomic activities absorbed about 2/3rds of the trained people for exploring our scientific and technical frontiers.” Certainly this percentage cannot have diminished any may have increased with the pyramiding costs of the Vietnam War. The defense budget (this year upward of 90 billion) merges the military-industrial complex into one effort. Such a merger creates the authentic danger of an excess of power, political and economic in the hands of this combination.

Consider the words of Christian Science Monitor correspondent Joseph C. Harsch, certainly no radical, “There obviously is a complex of military and allied industrial interests which wields great influence. This influence may not have ‘brainwashed President Johnson into the Vietnam War,’ as Republican Senator Thruston Morton suggests. But certainly it is one reason why finding the road to peace is proving so long, painful, and difficult. An end to the war would be in fact contrary to the interests of the military-industrial complex.”

It is in such circumstances – the difficult jargon and the forces we fail to understand completely (and there are many such forces) – that world peace through world law must be achieved. One may argue with various plans; or criticize harshly the United Nations. As U Thant pointed out in his summer report this year, which was somewhat pessimistic, that needed was more UN machinery to stop disputes before they explode – machinery for negotiations, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement and more use of the World Court. But needed just as keenly is much more trust by the large nations of such an international peace-keeping process.

There is a story of the wars between the Royalists and the Cromwell Puritans in 17th century England. A Royalist general before fighting at the battle of Edgehill prayed this way, “O Lord thou knowest how busy I shall be this day; if I forget thee, do not forget me. March on, boys.” This is a rather typical attitude – not only in prayer but in reference to such organizations as the U.N. “If I forget thee, do not forget me.” Well a world of peace through law won’t work if we expect it to remember us while we forget the responsibility to take the hopeful risks of peace rather than the fatal chances of war.

Can there occur in time a replacement of war by law? Only if there grows steadily, and without prolonged delays, an increasing groundswell of public opinion affirming that a strengthened world assembly – a U.N. with peacekeeping power – is the inescapable requirement to prevent a burned-out, pestilential planet.

Many of us remember the growth of totalitarianism in the 20s and 30s. The dictators ruled by force through obedient military establishments whose responsibility it was to carry out orders, regardless of what those orders might be. This was clearly demonstrated in the Nuremberg trials. But the dictators acquired and held power because they had the explicit support or the silent acquiescence of the largest segment of people – the middle and upper classes, people like ourselves, by and large.

Do you know the story (from the Christian Science Monitor) of five-year-old Betty, who “unwittingly tried to promote her older sister’s chances one evening when her boy friend unexpectedly called at their home. ‘My sister isn’t home,’ Betty told him, ‘She wants to get married so she’s going to night school studying domestic silence.’”

Well, many wrong things could be set more right if there were more of us not practicing domestic silence on issues that are pivotal to genuine survival.

In all candor, there will be a prevailing silence unless attitudes change. There can be no growing recognition of public opinion for peace unless public opinion exerts its force. How [can we] change attitudes? Various approaches are limitless in variety. But I would like to speak of just one attitude change which would help build a world of law, not war – we need an expanded idea of patriotism.

Patriotism has referred to the soldier, the sailor, the marine, the men in uniform, volunteers and draftees alike, who carry out orders in the face of danger, suffering wounds, imprisonment, death, to fulfill volunteer or imposed obligation to the country in time of war. The patriot is ... Nathan Hale, courageous in the face of the gallows, John Paul Jones, Andrew Jackson, U.S. Grant, Teddy Roosevelt, Sgt. Alvin York, the unknown soldiers, those awarded medals of honor and Purple Hearts – these have been called the patriots and rightly so – all honor to them, now and forever.

Patriotism is also more loosely used to designate those in organizations hewing to the military line and criticizing all varieties of dissenters. “My country right or wrong.”

But the definition should be wider, not only those who die in war, but also those who work for peace are patriots too. The values we prize, the very existence of human life in our land depends on peacemakers more than those who plan the deployment of our young warriors.

Jean Giraudoux, in his play “Tiger at the Gates,” has Andromache (Hector’s wife) say to Demokos, the passionate nationalist, “But which is the worse cowardice? To appear cowardly to others, and make sure of peace? Or to be cowardly in your own eyes, and lose a war?”

Demokos answers, “Cowardice is not to prefer death on every hand, rather than the death of one’s own native land.”

The warrior’s wife replies, “Everyone dies for his country. If you lived in it well and wisely and actively, you die for it too.”

How can we fail to recognize in this age where instantaneous death for most of the world is the wired button near the finger of the Chief Executive of at least two nations, each hostile to the other? How can we fail to recognize that patriotism is keeping the peace as well as struggling valiantly in war? Such is an attitude change which would move us toward growing insistence on a world governed by law with rights guaranteed. There is no other alternative.

Of the Celtic pioneer farmer-freeman before the Norman invasion, the historian Sir Arthur Bryant wrote, “He was wont to speak his mind out freely in the court of the village or shire – for among this simple people, the man who spoke the truth fearlessly was as honored as the man who fought bravely.” (MEDIEVAL HISTORY OF ENGLAND, p. 18). If that is a simple truth, it is one we need to recapture and hold and honor as our own, too.

I have tried to say that a genuine ethic of survival in this world where war can demolish and exterminate everything living requires:

That we must be critical of jargon which blurs the horrible realities of war.

That we must understand the forces that by definition need an intensified [effort towards] world peace through world law, with a strengthened U.N. as the most obvious and available instrument through which this can be achieved.

That before this can happen in any degree of strength, that public opinion must gather much more strongly in favor of replacing war with law through international peace-keeping.

That public opinion must experience attitude changes before it will turn to peace in such a manner.

Think again on the worlds of Isaiah, “They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; Neither shall they learn war any more. But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid.”

Was that dreaming the impossible dream? Who can say. But when gloom is heavy upon me I consider the insensibility of so many to the horror of war and the beauty of peace; there are times I pick up a paper with some words written by a friend of mine, who for many years has dreamed that impossible dream, has persistently upheld the claims of a world at peace. He too gets discouraged, but also he wrote:

“There are no ‘great men.’ Those of the ‘great men’ whom I have observed directly were just men into whom the people, the mass of people, had poured their dreams. Some of these men were big enough to shoulder their load of dreams and become ‘great’ and some have been so small that there was no discernible relation between the true man and the public image of the man.

“But whether the man was ‘great’ or a pygmy, hidden behind an image of greatness, the thing that really made for “greatness” was the great dream that people dared to dream. When millions of people dared to hold the faith that people need not starve in the midst of plenty, great new leaders appeared and the depression was licked. When millions and millions of people dared to abide by the faith that a ‘master race’ was a myth, a false god, then great leaders emerged and Hitler crawled into his bunker.

“And if we look to great men to save us, we are lost. But when you and I, many of us, each of us, stand up and say out loud, ‘War in an atomic age is suicide,’ then from somewhere as has always happened and always will happen, a great leader will appear.

“There are no great men. But great men appear when the people dare to dream great dreams. It is the little people who dream and will not stop dreaming who are the heroic men.”