Peace, Peace
A true story: A retired coupled was alarmed by the threat of nuclear war so they undertook a serious study of all the inhabited placed on the globe. Their goal was to determine where in the world would be the place to be least likely affected by nuclear war. A place of ultimate security. They studied and traveled. Finally they found the place. And on Christmas they sent their pastor a card from the new home—in the Falkland Islands. However, their “paradise” was soon turned into a war zone by Great Britain and Argentina. Jesus said, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.”
Spontaneous Brotherhood
Amid the horrors of World War I, there occurred a unique truce when, for a few hours, enemies behaved like brothers.
Christmas Eve 1914 was all quiet on France’s Western Front, from the English Channel to the Swiss Alps. Trenches came within fifty miles of Paris. The war was only five months old, and approximately eight hundred thousand men had been wounded or killed. Every soldier wondered whether Christmas Day would bring another round of fighting and killing, but something happened.
British soldiers raised Merry Christmas signs, and soon carols were heard from German and British trenches alike.
Christmas dawned with unarmed soldiers leaving their trenches as officers of both sides tried unsuccessfully to stop their troops from meeting the enemy in the middle of no-man’s-land for songs and conversation. Exchanging small gifts—mostly sweets and cigars—they passed Christmas Day peacefully along miles of the front. At one spot, the British played soccer with the Germans, who won three to two.
In some places, the spontaneous truce contained the next day, neither side willing to fire the first shot. Finally, the war resumed when fresh troops arrived, and the high command of both armies ordered that further “informal understandings” with the enemy would be punishable as treason.
Enemies’ Secrets
If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility. –Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The Desire for Peace
Ramsey MacDonald, one-time prime minister of England, was discussing with another government official the possibility of lasting peace. The latter, an expert on foreign affairs, was umimpressed by the prime minister’s idealistic viewpoint. He remarked cynically, “The desire for peace does not necessarily ensure it.” This MacDonald admitted, saying, “Quite true. But neither does the desire for food satisfy your hunger, but at least it gets you started toward a restaurant.”
Out of Touch with the World
One of the strangest tales to come out of World War II concerns the story of two young men who were captured by the Americans in Germany near the end of the war.
The two were shipped to a POW camp in this country, but attempts to integrate them were to no avail. They would not or could not speak to American authorities. They kept to themselves and refused to talk to anyone, even their fellow German prisoners. In fact, the other German prisoners insisted that they knew nothing of the pair.
The American officers were puzzled. The two men seemed frightened and bewildered but not sullen or rebellious. After a few weeks in their new quarters, they even seemed willing to cooperate, but when they finally did speak, no one could understand a word they said. There was something else too. They did not look like Germans. Since their features were more Asiatic in appearance, an expert in Asiatic languages was called in. He soon solved the mystery. The two were Tibetans, and they were overjoyed that at last someone was able to understand them and to listen to their incredible, almost unbelievable story.
It seems that in the summer of 1941 the two friends, lured by a desire to see something of the world outside their tiny village, crossed the northern frontier of Tibet and for weeks wandered happily in Soviet Russian territory. Abruptly, they were picked up by Russian authorities, put on a train with hundreds of other young men, and shipped west.
Outside a large city, at an army camp, they were issued uniforms and rifles and given some rudimentary military training. After a few days, they were loaded onto trucks with the other soldiers and shipped to the Russian front.
They were horrified at what they saw. Men were killing each other with artillery, rifles—even hand-to-hand fighting. Because they were good Buddhists, killing was against their moral principles. They started to flee to the rear, but in their flight, they were overtaken by the Germans and made prisoners. Once again, they were loaded onto a train and shipped, this time to Germany. After the Normandy invasion, as the American forces neared Germany, they were put into an auxiliary service in the German army. As the Americans continued to advance, the two were given guns and told to fight with the Germans. Once again they tried to flee, but this time were captured by the Americans. When they had finished their story, the interpreter asked them if they had any questions. They had only one: “Why were all those people trying to kill each other?”
A Fable on Peace
When Christ was born, the angel declared to the frightened shepherds, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to people of good will.”
But the world has seen very few years of peace since Christ our Prince of Peace came. I discovered this fable on peace which challenges me.
“Tell me the weight of a snowflake,” a sparrow asked a wild dove.
“Nothing more than nothing,” was the answer.
“In that case, I must tell you a marvelous story,” the sparrow said. “I sat on the branch of a fir, close to its trunk, when it began to snow—not heavily, not in a raging blizzard—no, just like in a dream, without a sound, and without any violence. Since I did not have anything better to do, I counted the snowflakes settling on the twigs and needles of my branch. Their number was exactly 3,741,952. When the 3,741,953rd dropped onto the branch, nothing more than nothing, as you say, the branch broke off.”
Having said that, the sparrow flew away.
The dove, since Noah’s time an authority on the matter, thought about the story for awhile, and finally said to herself, “Perhaps only one person’s voice is lacking for peace to come to the world.”