The 19th century was hailed the British century, when the sun never set on some part of the far-flung British Empire. The 20th century, proclaimed Henry Luce, son of U.S. missionaries to China and editor of "Life" magazine, was the American century. The British century was marked by mercantilism, a plundering of its colonies for the raw materials the "mother" country would fashion to sell on the world market. The American century, apart from the colonies of Spain in the first decade of that century, did not resort to colonialism, but simply developed sufficient military might to impose its will to effect a different version of mercantilism. In both centuries the result was the same - the subjugation and exploitation of the poor by the rich and powerful. Except that in this past century we have succeeded in fashioning weapons capable of destroying not only civilization but all humankind.

 

Robert and Dana Curtis were just two of the more than 100 million who paid with their lives in this 20th century of total war. "Bob," a student of the rocket pioneer, Professor Robert Goddard, at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, enlisted in the Army Air Corps in the spring following the "day of infamy" at Pearl Harbor. Scarcely a year passed before a gold star appeared in June, 1943, on a small blue flag on the front door at 48 Beverly Road in Worcester. A navigator on a B17 "Flying Fortress," Bob was killed when a German fighter plane, an FW190, shot the bomber out of the sky. Married less than two months, his death at 22 left Margie, his widow, to grieve with the rest of our family over one cut short in the prime of his life.

 

In was eight years later that a second gold star appeared on the little blue flag of my family home. For Dana, four years younger than Bob, and a mine engineer in the Army, missed the mine that killed him as he fled the 180,000 Chinese "volunteers" who poured over the Yalu River in North Korea to assist their fellow Communists. In his last letter to me he implored me to pray for him, for was literally running for his life, day and night, in freezing temperatures, clothes only in the summer khakis the Army had provided, "knowing" this would be a short war. Like Margie, Dana's widow grieved with the rest of the family, the grief that much more painful for her having to raise her two small children without Dana by her side.

 

With the advent of a new century and a new millennium, hopes were high that we had learned, as Santayana put it, a major lesson of history so we would not repeat it - that the resort to violence, especially the murder of war, would be a relic of man's inhumanity to his fellow man. Could we, would we, resolve with those who erected the memorial at the infamous Dachau Concentration Camp, imprinted with just two words, but in five languages, "NEVER AGAIN"? If anything, the horrors of war continue to plague us in this 21st century. In matters little which nation shall come to claim it as their century. What does matter is the resolve with which we face this carnage. Beyond resolve, it will require a new mind-set to rid the world of this 4th Horseman of the Apocalypse. For war represents the triumph of unreason over reason, of violence over negotiation, of anarchy over order, and of barbarism over civilization.

 

It is my fervent hope, as one who can look back over 60 years to my survival of World War II as a fighter pilot flying a P51 "Mustang," for 51 missions, that my two brothers will not have died in vain. We can and we must learn that war solves nothing, that violence only begets violence.

Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War, wrote in the "New York Times" in 1964,

 

I don't object to its being called McNamara's War.It is a very important war and I am pleased to be identified with it and do what I can to win it.

 

But 31 years later, speaking in Washington D.C., he had this to say:

 

We.acted according to what we thought were the principles and traditions of this nation. We were wrong. We were terribly wrong. (Daily Telegraph, 4/10/95)

 

It was a tragedy that McNamara had not taken to heart the words of President John F. Kennedy, speaking to the U.N. General Assembly, September 25, 1961:

 

Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to making. (NY Times, 9/26/61)