Peace Hath Higher Tests of Manhood

(Ed. Note--The Crimson does not necessarily endorse opinions expressed in printed communications. No attention will be paid to anonymous letters and only under special conditions, at the request of the writer, will names he withheld.)

To the Editor of the CRIMSON:

Mr. Benjamin Rand in Saturday's CRIMSON writes ". . . lost we forget, these who have been splendid in service and sublime in suffering." Eulogizing the dead and the living soldier, praising his heroic martyrdom, he hallows war. He makes it a holy step in a path of glory, threats it as the means to "peace and nobler life," actually calls those "happy who actively served in this great cause."

Isn't it time we changed our attitude? Isn't it time we realized how futile war is, and came to an appreciation of just what the happy martyrdom is that war brings its dead?

How much more suffering must the world go through before the understanding comes that men are fools, and not martyrs, who go to war! Those who died in 1914-18 were not heroes; they were poor, deluded misfortunates, led to believe they could attain a sweet and lasting peace through brutal and coarse killings. Martyrs are they? Heroes? Sublime, splendid men? Perhaps if they had lived and died in peace, working actually being useful--then perhaps they might have aspired to those titles. But how can we grant them to them when they wasted their genius in killing and being killed, in futile effort, vain self-sacrifice, in foolish, cruel endeavor!

War cannot give us heroes and great men--but it can take them away from us. That is the lesson we ought not forget. When public opinion recognizes that war is waste; killing, cruel; and soldiers and all those connected with war, deluded--when public opinion realizes that no lasting peace can ever be attained by war; that each war makes peace just so much more remote, and life just so much more primitive--perhaps then we will do away with force as a means of settlement. Then only will we really have peace in which our young men can work and accomplish--and prove their right to the title of "hero" without having to have it thrust on their dead bodies, whose strength and genius were wasted in making other bodies dead.

Load, Lest we forget--they were not martyrs, but poor, deluded fools. Spare us from their fate. James L. Hymes, Jr. '34.