International Crisis & Wars

Some of the people still alive today can recall President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s speech about the Japanese attack on Pearl, Harbor on December 7, 1941. His stirring words were played all day over the radio:

“I ask that Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7th, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese empire.

            Looking at World Wars I and II combined, from a positive angle, considering the millions of people who were killed (approximately 160,000,000 including civilians and war-related disease victims), and considering the entirety of humankind, is that together we learned the hard lessons of self-discipline, responsibility, and compassion.

It was the world’s first all-engulfing international crisis.  Most of the world became embroiled in the multi-leveled and multi-locationed war to end all wars. The war also signaled that humanity had passed its youth and had entered adulthood in terms of responsibility. As a whole planetary body, humankind assumed the responsibility to take the necessary action for independence and multi-faceted growth and development of the consciousness of unity.

We, the one humanity, were forced to learn through the brutality of war that choices and decisions had to be made in split-seconds, often without the luxury of being able to discuss pros and cons with anyone. The war was a huge lesson in joint-cooperation, harmony, trust and love.  People we knew and loved were forced into a situation in which friends and foes learned to build friendship with former enemies.

            The Great War, both wars combined, from 1914 to 1945, brought out the fact that humanity, as one great body, had learned to take a necessary step in its own evolution. It was the longest stride man had ever taken.  Those who remain and look back on that crisis must remember that in spite of the immense loss of life, a huge flag had been placed on the long evolutionary path of humanity.

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All rights reserved. Rebecca Field