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Smith’s ‘Not in a thousand years’.
    Not all attempted solutions are praiseworthy. Sometimes we are deceived by the rhetoric of propaganda. The Roman historian Tacitus gives us the response of Calgracus, a British chief in the north of England to the conquest of the Roman legions under Agricola – ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant ‘they make a wilderness and they call it peace’. His remark can be applied to wars today. We hear often that fifty thousand American troops died in Vietnam; we are seldom told that three million Vietnamese died. A million Algerians died in their war of independence. Robert Fisk has revealed the savagery of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the siege of Beirut in his book Pity the Nation . However just in principle the offensive against Sadam Hussein, the Gulf War in terms of civilian casualties resulted in perhaps the greatest single western atrocity since the devastation of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which latter events were once described by Pope Paul VI as a ‘butchery of untold magnitude’.
    How do we face the tremendous discord in our world today? – ferocious new means of warfare threatening a savagery surpassing that of the past, deceit, subversion, terrorism, genocide, and forms of structural violence where resources and the control of resources are the property of one group who use them not for the good of all but for their own profit.
    I think that since the last Great War the concept of ‘Peace’ has ideologically replaced the glorification of war. Slowly different governments have made public declarations of their past inhumanity to man. Reconciliation requires repentance as a first step. How can we repent for the enslavement of Africans, for the genocide of the Indians of North and South America and other indigenous peoples, for colonialism, for domination, oppression and aggression? Germany has done it for the immeasurable suffering it caused. Could the former allies not also ask forgiveness for the fire storms inflicted on Hamburg and the bombing of Dresden? Consider the magnificent words of John Baker, Anglican bishop of Salisbury. ‘I consider it is perfectly right for Englishmen – as I and some of my friends have done – to go over to Ireland and say, “Look I am sorry”. Not just we are sorry, but I am sorry for what we have done to bring about the problems you now face. And I believe that it would be an enormous step forward in the whole situation if our own political leaders, preferably the Prime Minister – I tried this on when Margaret Thatcher was in power – were actually to say something like that in a speech. Not to say we think that everything we’re doing at the moment is wicked or anything like that, but to accept responsibility for having brought the situation or contributed to bringing the situation to where it is now. And that in itself is very important. You can’t make other people forgive you, but you can at least say, “we need to be forgiven”, and I think that is a very important Christian insight.’
    Pope John Paul in his homily at Coventry Cathedral said, ‘Peace is not just the absence of war. It involves mutual respect and confidence between peoples and nations. It involves collaboration and binding agreements. Like a cathedral, peace must be constructed patiently and with unshakeable faith’.
    Because of the interdependence of the world we look to international organisations for solutions. They have mushroomed since the end of the last world war. Pope Paul VI called the United Nations the last hope for peace. However, it is clear that its bureaucracy and outdated Security Council greatly hamper its work. I think public opinion is more than disappointed in its failure to act in Rwanda. The same pope once said, ‘If you wish peace, defend life’. He would be more than disappointed at the United Nations Preparatory