Kennedy High School - Gryphon Yearbook (Willingboro, NJ)

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This evening after a hard day's work I asked my wife to play me a Beethoven sonata. With its angelic voices the music recalled me from bustle and worry to the real world, to the one reality which we possess, which gives us joy and tor- ment, the reality in which and for which we live. Afterwards I read a few lines in the book containing the Sermon on the Mount and the sublime, age-old and fundamental words: Thou shalt not kill! But I found no peace, I could neither go to bed nor continue reading. I was filled with anx- iety and unrest, and suddenly, Herr Minister, as I was searching my mind for their cause, I re- membered a few sentences from one of your speeches that I read a few days ago. Your speech was well constructed, otherwise it was not particularly original, significant or provocative. Reduced to the essentials, it said roughly what government officials have been saying in their speeches for a long time: that generally speaking we long for nothing so fer- vently as peace, as a new understanding among nations and fruitful collaboration in building the future, that we wish neither to enrich our- selves nor to satisfy homicidal lusts-but that the time for negotiations is not yet at hand and that for the present there is therefore no al- ternative but to go on bravely waging war. Just about any minister of any of the belligerent na- tions might have made such a speech, and probably will tomorrow or the day after. If tonight your speech keeps me awake, al- though I have read many similar speeches with the same dreary conclusion and slept soundly afterwards, the fault, as I am now certain, lies with Beethoven's sonata and with that ancient book in which I afterwards read, that book which contains the wonderful commandments of Mount Sinai and the luminous words of the Saviour. Beethoven's music and the words of the Bible told me exactly the same thing, they were water from the same spring, the only spring from which man derives good. And then suddenly, Herr Minister, it came to me that your speech, and the speeches of your governing colleagues in both camps, do not How from that spring, that they lack what can make human words im- portant and valuable, They lack love, they lack humanity. Your speech shows a profound feeling of concern and responsibility for your people, its army and its honor. But it shows no feeling for mankind. And, to put it bluntly, it implies hun- dreds of thousands more human sacrifices. Perhaps you will call my reference to Beetho- ven sentimentality. I imagine, though, that you feel a certain respect for the Commandments and for the sayings of Jesus-at least in public. To a Cabinet Minister August l9l7 But if you believe in a single one of the ideals for which you are waging war, the freedom of nations, freedom of the seas, social progress, or the rights of small countries-if you truly, in your heart of hearts, believe in a single one of these generous ideals, you will have to recog- nize on reading your speech that it does not serve that ideal or any other. It is not the ex- pression and product of a faith, of any aware- ness of a human need, but alas, the expression and product of a dilemma. An understandable dilemma, to be sure, for what could be more diflicult at the present time than to acknowledge a certain disappointment with the course of the war and to start looking for the shortest way to peace? But such a dilemma, even if it is shared by ten governments, cannot endure forever. Di- lemmas are solved by necessities. One day it will become necessary for you and your enemy colleagues to face up to your dilemma and make a decision that will put an end to it. The belligerents of both camps have long been disappointed with the course of war. Re- gardless of who has won this battle or that battle, regardless of how much territory or how many prisoners have been taken or lost, the re- sult has not been what one expects in a war. There has been no solution, no decision-and none is in sight. You made your speech in order to hide this great dilemma from yourself and your people, in order to postpone vital decisions twhich al- ways call for sacrificesj-and other government oflicials make their speeches for the same rea- son. Which is understandable. It is easier for a revolutionary or even for a writer to see the hu- man factor in a political situation and draw the proper inferences, than for a responsible states- man. It is easier for one of us because he is un- der no obligation to feel personally responsible for the deep gloom that comes over a nation when it sees that it has not achieved its war aim and that many thousands of human lives and billions in wealth may well have been sacrificed in vain. But that is not the only reason why it is harder for you to recognize the dilemma and make decisions that will put an end to the war. Another reason is that you hear too little music and read the Bible and the great authors too litte. You smile. Or perhaps you will say that you as a private citizen feel very close to Beethoven and to all that is noble and beautiful. And maybe you do. But my heartfelt wish is that one of these days, chancing to hear a piece of sub- lime music, you should suddenly recapture an awareness of those voices that well from the sa- cred spring. I wish that one of these days in a quiet moment you would read a parable of 32 Jesus, a line of Goethe, or a saying of Lao-tse. That moment might be infinitely important to the world. You might find inner liberation. Your eyes and ears might suddenly be opened. For many years, Herr Minister, your eyes and ears have been attuned to theoretical aims rather than reality, they have long been accus- tomed-necessarily so!-to close themselves to much of what constitutes reality, to disregard it, to deny its existence. Do you know what I mean? Yes, you know. But perhaps the voice of a great poet, the voice of the Bible, the eternal voice of humanity that speaks clearly to us from art, would give you the power of true sight and hearing. What things you would see and hear! Nothing more about the labor shortage and the price of coal, nothing more about tonnages and alliances, loans, troop levies and all the rest of what you have hitherto regarded as the sole reality. Instead you would see the earth, our patient old earth, so littered with the dead and dying, so ravaged and shattered, so charred and desecrated. You would see soldiers lying for days in noman's land, unable with their muti- lated hands to shoo the flies from their mortal wounds. You would hear the voices of the wounded, the screams of the mad, the accusing plaints of mothers and fathers, sweethearts and sisters, the peopleis cry of hunger. If your ears should be opened once more to all these things that you have sedulously avoided hearing for months and years, then per- haps you would re-examine your aims, your ideals and theories, with a new mind, and at- tempt to weigh their true worth against the mis- ery ofa single month, a single day, of war. Oh, if this hour of music, this return to true reality, could somehow come your way! You would hear the voice of mankind, you would shut yourself up in your room and weep. And next day you would go out and do your duty to- ward mankind. You would sacrifice a few mil- lions or billions in money, a trifiing bit of pres- tige, and a thousand other things tall the things for which you are now prolonging the wary, and if need be your ministerfs portfolio with them, and you would do what mankind, in untold fear and torment, is hoping and praying you will do. You would be the first among govern- ing statesmen to condemn this wretched war, the first to tell his fellows what all feel secretly even now: that six months, or even one month of war costs more than what anything it can achieve is worth. If that were to happen, Herr Minister, your name would never be forgotten, your deed would stand higher in the eyes of mankind than the deeds of all those who have ever waged vic- torious wars. From Ifthe War Goes On. .. by Hemiann Hesse.

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S I ...... mx if M fl .A---W' Q ,444 I r...-..-.w... When I carefully consider the curious habits of dogs Iam compelled to conclude That man is the superior animal. When I consider the curious habits of man Iconfess, my friend, I am puzzled. Ezra Pound 31

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administration Sc faculty