"To be part of a world that is totally at peace with itself would be like entering heaven before one's time. I don't think that there has ever been one day since the world was created when one man, one country and one God wasn't in conflict or at war with another.
In today's age of belligerency, where a country's access to nuclear warheads, intercontinental ballistic missiles and bombs ten times more powerful than those that were dropped on Japan during the 'Second World War' are thought to be essential to a nation's safety, it bodes well to remember the wisdom of Albert Einstein when he said, 'A country cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.' One powerful argument in favour of those who advocate unilateral disarmament is that if the means is no longer there, neither will be the capacity to be ever tempted.
I do not know if war can ever be considered to be inevitable under any circumstances. Most historians and democratic people in the world would hold up the fight against Hitler during the 'Second World War' and the many millions of lives it cost as having been essential and justified. I have often wondered which is worse; an unjust peace or an unjust war.
Perhaps, like many millions of people across the world from the past, present and the future, wars will be fought and considered essential and just to preserve freedom and a preferred way of life. As the great mind of Aristotle concluded with his paradoxical pronouncement, 'We make war that we may live in peace.'
Perhaps a world never at war with itself or its neighbour is as unlikely as a group of wildly different animals and beasts of the forest gathering together at a common waterhole for an afternoon picnic of international peace?
I do not know the answer of how all future war can be prevented and stopped. What I do know, however, is that fighting aggression with more aggression will never lessen the conflict or restore the peace. Just as it takes light to drive out darkness, hatred can only be driven out by love!" William Forde: October 2nd, 2017.