War : Is it necessary?

No doubt war is an evil, the greatest catastrophe that befalls human beings. It
brings death and destruction, disease and starvation, poverty, and ruin in its wake.
One has only to look back to the havoc that was wrought in various countries not
many years ago, in order to estimate the destructive effects of war.
A particularly disturbing side of modern wars is that they tend to become global so
that they may engulf the entire world. But there are people who consider war as
something grand and heroic and regard it as something that bring out the best in
man, but this does not in any way alter the fact that war is a terrible, dreadful
calamity. This is especially so now that a war will now be fought with atom bombs.
Some people say war is necessary. A glance at the past history will tell now war has
been a recurrent phenomenon in the history of nations. No period in world history
has been free from the devastating effects of war.
We have had advocates of nonviolence and the theory of the brotherhood of man
and fraternity of God. But in spite of that, weapons have always been used, military
force has always been employed, clashes of arms have always occurred; war has
always been waged. War has indeed been such a marked feature of every age and
period that it has come to be regarded as part of the normal life of nations.
Moltse, the famous German Field Marshal, declared war to be part of the God's
World-Order. Poets and prophets have dreamt of a millennium, a Utopia in which
war will not exist and eternal peace will reign on earth but these dreams have not
been fulfilled.

After the Great War of 1914-18 it was thought that there would be no war for a long
time to come and an institution called the League of Nations was founded as a
safeguard against the outbreak of war. The occurrence of another war (1939-45),
however, conclusively proved that to think of an unbroken peace is to be unrealistic
and that no institution or assembly can ever ensure the permanence of peace. The
League of Nations collapsed completely under the tensions and stresses created by
Hitler.

The United Nations Organization, with all the good work that it has been doing, is
not proving as effective as was desired. A large number of wars, the most recent
ones being the one in Vietnam, the other between India and Pakistan, or Indo-China
war, Iran-Iraq war or Arab- Israel war, have been fought despite the UN.

The fact of the matter is that fighting is a natural instinct in man. When even a
number of individuals cannot live always in peace, it is, indeed, too much to expect
so many nations to live in a state of eternal peace. Besides, there will always be
wide differences of opinion between various nations, different angles of looking at
matters that have an international importance, radical differences in policy and
ideology and these cannot be settled by mere discussions so that resort to war
becomes very necessary in these cases.

It also appears that if peace were to continue for a long period, people would
become sick of the monotony of life and would seek war for a change. Man is a
highly dynamic creature and it seems that he cannot remain contented merely with
works of peacethe cultivation of arts, the development of material comforts, the
extension of knowledge, the means and appliances of a happy life. He wants
something thrilling and full of excitement and he fights in order to get an outlet for
his accumulated energy. It must be admitted, too, that war has its good side. It
spurs men to heroism and self-sacrifice. It is an incentive to scientific research and
development. War is obviously an escape from the lethargy of peace