Dear Family,
I want to share with you some reflections on war and peace that I have had over Veterans Day, as well as over the course of a lifetime. Veterans Day summons up for me both gratitude and sadness. Gratitude for those who have served the cause of freedom in the military. And sadness that a holiday which began as a celebration of the cessation of war became a testament to the ongoing necessity of war.
Veterans Day was formerly known as Armistice Day. It commemorated the day when the “Guns of August,” which had thundered death for four years during the Great War, finally fell silent. This occurred on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918—exactly one hundred years ago today.
A century ago, people spoke of the Great War as “a war to end war.” Ironically, it became the prelude to more war. Indeed, the very name that history retrospectively conferred on the war—World War I—acknowledges that, far from being the end of war, the Great War became merely the first of yet more wars. Consequently, after the Second World War and the Korean War, Armistice Day was renamed Veterans Day. The idealistic hope for “world peace,” which had been part of its original name and enabling legislation, was replaced by a name recognizing the valiant service of ever more warriors in ever more wars.
As Paul Fussell observed in his justly admired book The Great War and Modern Memory, war constitutes “the continued experience of twentieth-century man.” Unhappily, of twenty-first century man as well. I have lived in the shadow of wars and rumors of wars all my life as I suspect you will too, until the coming of the Prince of Peace.
On this centennial Veterans Day, my mind has turned toward Flanders Fields. The suffering in the battlefields of Belgium and France was unspeakable, the numbers of dead impossible to truly comprehend. One cemetery lists the names of 130,000 unidentified soldiers. In the battle of the Somme, the British suffered 60,000 casualties along a 14-mile line on the first day alone! I have attached an article by my friend and former colleague George Tate with these two centennial essays. George tells of taking his students to Cougar Stadium and asking them visualize it completely filled so they could imagine what 60,000 casualties in a day means.
World War I does not loom large in American consciousness as it does in Europe and the British Isles owing to our late entry into the war. Today is “Remembrance Sunday” in the UK. People all across Great Britain will sport red paper poppies, church bells will ring, and a wreath will be placed on the Cenotaph. When you visit England, you will discover that every village and hamlet, no matter how small, has a memorial to those who died in the Great War. These ubiquitous memorials witness the reach of a war that devastated a whole generation.
Including many of its survivors. For the Great War destroyed not just lives but values that had sustained civilization. Paul Fussell describes in moving detail how the Great War left a much more cynical, wounded world in its wake.
In this way, WWI functioned in its day in Europe much as the Vietnam War did for my generation in America. I am a child of the sixties. This means that, even though I did not fight in Vietnam, I fought and argued about Vietnam a lot—with friends, neighbors, parents, and most of all with myself.
I have continued to engage in internal debate about the ethics of war all my adult life. At times with more urgency than others. One such time was during the long build-up to the Second Gulf War, which unlike many wars involved a prolonged period of national and international debate about the possible presence of “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq and about of what constituted legitimate legal and moral justifications for going to war. During this time, I read a great deal about what is called “just war theory,” by Latter-day Saints and those not of our faith. I wrestled with myself about the issue. I felt like I was in the sixties again, but this time I was a parent wondering what I should say to my children.
A gospel perspective on war came forcefully into my mind and heart. I spoke about it to our graduates at commencement about a year ago in connection with President McKay’s prophecy that “from this school . . . will go men and women whose influence will be felt for good toward the establishment of peace internationally.” Here is an excerpt from what I said:
I have wrestled many times in my life with the question of war. During one such time, as the US was getting ready to go to war, I wondered what to say to my children. I finally decided to teach them this: In God’s eyes, all wars are civil wars.
This does not mean that there is no such thing as a just war or that He regards each side as moral equals. It does mean, however, that war is an inherently tragic way to resolve conflict. Everyone who dies on either side is His child and our brother or sister.
And it means that even just wars do not justify hate. For Jesus taught that we must love our enemies, including those who persecute us and despitefully use us.
All war is civil war because we are family, brothers and sisters; we are all “of one blood.” This phrase, which David O. McKay used in his journal after the flag ceremony, comes from Paul’s great discourse on Mars Hill. Paul taught skeptical Greeks that God was in fact our father; that He had created all nations “of one blood.”
Therefore, as Enoch learned, God weeps when his children hate and kill each other. Enoch asks “How is that thou canst weep, seeing thou art holy, and from all eternity to all eternity?”
“The Lord said unto Enoch: Behold these thy brethren; they are the workmanship of mine own hands.” I commanded them “that they should love one another, and that they should choose me, their Father; but behold, they are without affection, and they hate their own blood” (Moses 7:29, 32-33).
There is the idea again. We are of one blood. Because we are spiritual blood brothers, all war is civil war in God’s eyes. Hence Heaven weeps when we hate and kill each other.
Living in the last days, you are destined to confront wars and rumors of wars. This will require you, as it has me, to make hard judgments about when a war is just and when it is not. And it will require you to love your enemies, for this commandment is universal and timeless truth of the gospel plan.
My dear family: It may require almost superhuman strength to love enemies in times of war when almost invariably they are demonized--as “Huns” were in WWI, and “Japs” were in WWII, and Muslims were after 9/11. To my knowledge, however, the Lord has never revoked nor granted exemptions from the commandment to love our enemies.
The Book of Mormon presents arguments for both pacifist and militarist responses to aggression. But note that righteous pacifists and generals both love those who hate them. Hence, whichever response we choose to violence, we are never justified in becoming like those who hate us.
Nor are we justified in thinking of combatants as mere numbers. As a boy, I sometimes watched with my dad what he called “Shoot ‘Em Up” Westerns. I used to wonder about the cowboys and Indians that were killed by the heroes. I thought to myself: “They have parents and family that love them, too. What about the death of those whom I later learned were called “extras.” Did not their lives matter?”
As a freshman in college, I was cast as an Incan extra in the play “The Royal Hunt of the Sun.” Every night, I was killed many times over. This also made me think about the lives of extras.
In God’s eyes, there are no “extras.” Every person in every battle, every one of the war dead that are often recounted in military histories, including those told in The Book of Mormon; all the crosses in the great military cemeteries; every name on their monuments was and is an individual of infinite worth. History and literature allow us to focus only a few characters. But in God’s eyes there are no extras. He is aware of each person in the crowd and the arc of his or her life.
When we regard war with God’s eyes, we see individuals not mere vast crowds. And we see not merely nations but siblings engaged in civil war, even in just wars when some children are in the right and some children are in the wrong.
These are some musings on war and peace I have had this historic Veterans Day. I hope that they might bless you, my dear children and grandchildren, as you live through an age of wars and rumors of war.