Article December 8, 1945 Issue

We Also Can Win the Peace

RALPH R. BAILEY

"Chaplain , if the enemy ever gives us time for another service, would you talk on 'When can mankind put up its sword?'"

This challenge came from a hard-bitten soldier on a day when we were in battle on the western front. By anyone's standard he was a brave man, who had gone repeatedly into combat during his two years overseas. Obviously, he was no mere speech-making patriot, and yet when quiet came again to the sector, he repeated his request, and urged his reasons: "It seems to me that back of this thought is significant meaning, very different from what a pacifist might think. And until we are willing to ponder its implications we never can have peace."

Acquainted with bitter cold, slugging his way through ice and snow to ultimate military victory this courageous soldier knew with more certainty than any theorist ever could that it is nonsense to talk of putting up the material sword until we are willing in some degree to sheathe the mental sword: the thoughts of greed: the faith in military aggression as a means of adjusting world problems: the attitude of indifference toward sharing political and religious freedom; the resentment over past defeats, or the gloating over victories; the desire to have for oneself what one is unwilling to help another achieve; belief in limited good.

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