A View of War

There are books which we remember long after we have read that tome. And very often what we remember is the plotline and a character or two. Sometimes the one thing which has been etched indelibly into our brain is a particular passage from that book, one passage which captures an idea or a thought so well that we carry it with us, from day to day, wherever we are.

I watched a dramatic presentation called Child of Our Time, on television many years ago. In those days, television still aspired to achieve a level of excellence in its programs that we seldom see today. The story so captured my interest that I found and purchased the book and it has been in my library ever since. The storyline of Child of Our Time involves what happens to a young boy in WWII France. His father is a fascist and his mother is a communist, and he gets caught up in the turmoil of that war. Through a series of wrong turns, he ends up interned a German concentration camp. An older man named Gunther, a politcal prisoner at the camp, protects the boy, Tanguy.

I have selected a passage from this book, a passage which has stuck in my mind for better than 40 years, to share with you in this post. In this passage, the author, Michel del Castillo, explores why mankind so often stumbles into the misadventure that we call war.

from Child of our Time by Michel del Castillo:

" '... I'm still a child, yet I've grown old. I know too much---' [Tanguy] broke off for a moment, then said, 'Gunther, why are there wars? Why do people want war?' "

" 'But who does want war, Tanguy? The man in the street? Stupid unreasoning people and patriotism goes to their heads because the newspapers know just how to stir up their enthusiasm? No, war is like some contagious disease. We say 'that's war' fatalistically, just as in the Middle Ages they used to shrug their shoulders at the plague. Nobody wants war, but war is there all the same. We are at its mercy. We never discover its horrors except by experience; ane then is is too late.' "