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War
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Some pessimistic historians think the whole society of man runs in cycles
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and that one of the phases is war.
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The optimists, on the other hand,
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think war is not like a flood or a spell of bad weather.
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They believe that it is more like a disease
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for which a cure could be found if the cause were known.
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Because war is the ultimate drama of life and death,
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stories and pictures of it
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are more interesting than those about peace.
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This is so true that all of us,
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and perhaps those of us on television more than most,
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are often caught up in the action of war to the exclusion of the ideas of it.
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If it is true, as we would like to think it is,
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that our age is more civilized than age past,
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we must all agree that it’s very strange that in the twentieth century,
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we have killed more than 70 millions of our fellowmen on purpose, at war.
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Probably the reason we are able to do both — that is,
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believe on the one hand that we are more civilized
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and on the other hand wage war to kill —
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is that killing is not so personal an affair in war as it once was.
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The enemy is invisible.
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One man doesn’t look another in the eye and kill him with a sword.
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The enemy, dead or alive, is largely unseen.
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He is killed by remote control:
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a loud noise, a distant puff of smoke and then...silence.
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The pictures of the victim’s wife and children,
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which he carries in his breast pocket,
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are destroyed with him.
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He is not heard to cry out.
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The question of compassion or pity or remorse does not enter into it.
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The enemy is not a man, he is a statistic.
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It is true, too,
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that more people are being killed at war now than previously
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because we’re better at doing it than we used to be.
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One man with one modern weapon can kill thousands.