We are using the back page of the company newsletter as a forum for employees to post their thoughts and feelings about Tuesday’s tragedy, and also to read some comforting words. I am a looking for some more stuff. Please let me know if you have a favorite poem, quote or verse on war, peace, grief or anything suitable.
Mods - I wasn’t sure if this should go here or in Cafe Society, it’s a poll, but about art, please move it if I am mistaken.
Captain Ross’s (portrayed by Dana Andrews) speech to the Japanese judge after being told that his crew will be executed as common criminals, instead of being allowed to remain as POWs in Japanese prison camps:
It’s true we Americans don’t know very much about you Japanese, and never did. And now I realize you know even less about us. You can kill us–all of us or part of us–but if you think that’s going to put the fear of God into the United States of America and stop them from sending other fliers to bomb you, you’re wrong–dead wrong. They’ll come by night and they’ll come by day, thousands of them. They’ll blacken your skies and burn your cities to the ground and make you get down on your knees and beg for mercy. This is your war. You wanted it. You asked for it. You STARTED it. And now you’re going to get it, and it won’t be finished until your dirty little empire is wiped off the face of the earth.
“But in modern war… you will die like a dog for no good reason.” [sub]- Ernest Hemingway[/sub]
“The only way to win an atomic war is to make certain it never starts.” [sub]- General Omar Bradley[/sub]
“Henceforth the adequacy of any military establishment will be tested by its ability to preserve the peace.” [sub]- Henry Kissenger[/sub]
“What difference does it make to the dead… whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?.” [sub]- Mohandas Gandhi[/sub]
“We have the power to make this the best generation of mankind in the history of the world - or to make it the last.” [sub]- JFK[/sub]
I dunno if these applied to what you wanted, but they made me think.
Take care.
That’s a very old one, supposedly an anonymous Roman proverb.
“We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and the oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills, we shall never surrender.”
“I have seen war. I have seen war on land and sea. I have seen blood running from the wounded. I have seen the dead in the mud. I have seen cities destroyed. I have seen children starving. I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war.”
– Franklin Delano Roosevelt
“I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.”
– Dwight David Eisenhower
All of “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” especially this stanza:
“When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honor the charge they made,
Honor the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred.”
As for peace, I think John Lennon’s song “Imagine” would do it, especially:
“You may say I’m a dreamer,
But I’m not the only one,
I hope some day you’ll join us,
And the world will live as one.”