Thank GOD for peace on Earth again, Good will t'ward men once more. Lift up your heart, 'twas not in vain Our men went forth to war! Conquered on earth, in sea and sky, Cruel Prussian might shall cease. And the whole world shall henceforth live In amity and peace.
H.G. Wells was the source of the phrase “the war to end all wars”. This was the title of his book from 1914, The War That Will End War, a collection of articles he published in London newspapers. Wells had the idealistic belief that the end of the conflict would make it impossible to wage future wars.
Obviously this was not the case, as Wells himself acknowledged; those words took on a cynical, sneering quality through four years of WWI, and another six years of the Second World War.
I cannot imagine the horror of First World War survivors watching a second, more terrifying conflict emerge in 1939. Imagine celebrating the end of war and then, 21 years later, there it is again; and this time, when it’s over and the dust settles, a new word will be coined for an old horror.
Genocide.
I can’t grasp the mindset behind the desire to wipe out an entire group of people—and then working to go through with it. That scale of violence doesn’t make a lick of sense to me and it shouldn’t make sense to anyone else.
But that’s what we’re witnessing right now, in the year 2023: genocide. Thousands of people are dying in Gaza because of one leader’s lust for blood and land, and the world is just sitting by and watching it happen. The cowardice of our leaders is on full display, refusing to stand up for the downtrodden who have gone through seventy-five years of being abused, and maimed, and slaughtered, and kidnapped, and pushed from their homes to make room for settlers.
On November 11, 2023, at the 11th hour, it will have been 105 years since the end of the war to end wars.
If only.
