War and Peace

Barbarians and Civilized

We call barbarians
people living
on the other side of the border.
We call civilized
people living
on this side of the border.
We civilized,
living on this side of the border,
are not ashamed
to arm ourselves to the teeth
so as to protect ourselves
against the barbarians
living on the other side.
And when the barbarians
born on the other side of the border
invade us,
we do not hesitate
to kill them
before we have tried
to civilize them.
So we civilized
exterminate barbarians
without civilizing them.
And we persist
in calling ourselves civilized.

German and French

After the fall
of the Roman Empire
German barbarians
invaded Gaul,
now called France.
The German barbarians
came as invaders
and were civilized
by the invaded.
The Gallo-Germans
living in Gaul,
now called France,
were Christians.
Through a Christian technique
the Gallo-Romans
made Christians
out of the German invaders.
So the German invaders
gave up their religion
as well as their language
and took up the religion
as well as the language
of the invaded.

Italians and Ethiopians

Italian soldiers
went to Ethiopia
to civilize the Ethiopians.
The Italian soldiers
still think
that invaders
can civilize the invaded.
But the Ethiopians
do not like the way
the Italian soldiers
try to civilize them.
The best way
to civilize the Ethiopians
is to prepare
Ethiopian young men
for the priesthood.
As Christopher Dawson says,
culture
has a lot to do
with religion.

Spaniards and Moors

Moors from Morocco
ruled part of Spain
for eight hundred years.
They imposed Mohammedanism
on the Spaniards
through the power of the sword.
After eight hundred years,
the Spanish Christians
decided to give the Moors
a dose of their own medicine.
So the Spanish Christians
drove the Moors out of Spain
through the power of the sword.
Before the war,
Spanish Christians
failed to make use
of the power of the word.
Spanish Christians
seem to have more faith
in the power of the sword
than the power of the word.
So had the Moors
when ruling part of Spain
for eight hundred years.

Stalinites and Trotskyites

Eugene Lyons says
that Lenin and Trotsky
accepted the idea
that the end
justifies the means.
They thought
that an idealistic end
could be reached
by bloody means.
Because they resorted
to bloody means,
Stalin resorts
to bloody means.
The State has not yet
withered away
and the Communist ideal
is still out of sight.