Great Paper: "Passing of the Gods" By David C. Smith ~Mislead Beliefs~

Great Paper: Passing of the Gods by David C. Smith

~Mislead Beliefs~

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“And so the papers were rolled up, chairs were pushed away, weapons clattered and jangled on their
chains. Lord Thameron withdrew his retainers, and rode back to his campsite on the western end of
the long feild. Kurus returned to the head of the lines and ordered his men to prepare themselves for
an advance in the morning.

For it is the commitment to conflict that generals always see as the final persuasion of a long series
of failed alternatives: conflict planned as the final alternative, and not something to be avoided like a
disease or a catastrophe. War, think the generals, is always a solution. War, they believe, is ever
inevitable. War, they presume grows in men’s hearts as a desire as naturally as does the need for a
wife and family, prosperity and comfort. War, they hold, is only one of many things that men have
continued to inherit from their forebearers, and will always inherit. And to resort to war is never to
resort to weakness and pride and anarchy, but rather to rise to a challenge of honor and duty and
dignity. As though honor and duty and dignity reveal themselves most proudly when written in blood.

Thus have all the mothers of all nations ever given birth to generations of sons whose ultimate
destiny is to soak the earth with their running blood, offer their burned and broken flesh to the
maggots and the vultures, so that it can be said that all the generals and all the engineers of
war had honorably and dutifully risen to the challenge of opposition and defeated it with dignity.”

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Powerful stuff… I should think twice next time I think of talking about war in a impartial fashion.
Mr.Smith shares true words here, war is a monster, just the proposition of it shadows unequatable
amounts of pain and loss.