Rockridge High School
Taylor Ridge, Illinois
Teacher: Barb Downey
War and Peace
By Brett Anderson
12th grade
“War, good god ya’ll, what is it good for, absolutely nothing.” These are the lyrics to the popular song by The Animals. Although it is now considered an “oldie”, I think that people still need to pay attention to the lyrics. Over the years, there have been many different perspectives on war, and what people need to do to abolish it. Many important people such as Adolf Hitler, Henry Ford, and Albert Einstein have all been vocal on what they think of war. One main way to avoid war, or so some people believe, is for people to start using their heads. Intelligence is supposed to stop war from happening, but no matter how intelligent people are, war is inevitable.
Henry Ford, maybe the greatest American industrialist of all time, was not only active in the manufacturing of automobiles and airplanes. He also chartered a peace ship in 1915, which took him and some others to Europe where they unsuccessfully tried to talk the government into ending World War I. In addition, he was also nominated for the U.S. Senate in Michigan, he built the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, and he became the publisher of the Dearborn Independent.
“People are becoming too intelligent ever to have another big war. Statesmen have not anything like the prestige they had years ago, and what is educating the ordinary people against war is that they are mixing so much. The motor-car, radio and such things are the great ‘mixers’… I believe the last war was too much an educator for there ever to be another on a large scale.” This is a quote made by Henry Ford in which he basically says that as long as people are becoming more intelligent, then wars will stop breaking out. Henry Ford made this statement in 1928, about eleven years before World War II began. Obviously Henry Ford was wrong; there have been large wars like World War II, a war in which Adolf Hitler war involved.
Adolf Hitler was one of the twentieth century’s most powerful dictators. He was a German military and political leader who built the Nazi Party into a major movement. He used sterilization and euthanasia to enforce the idea of “racial purity”, which was the cause of the death of millions of people whom he saw as inferior.
Unlike Henry Ford, Hitler knew that intelligence could not stop war from coming. “The one means that wins the easiest victory over reason: terror and force.” What Hitler is saying is that even the most intelligent people cannot win peace if there is enough terrorism going on. If battle is underway, smart people will not just sit back and try to think of an intelligent way to end it; they will join the battle knowing that the only way to stop it is by fighting back.
Another very important person of the twentieth century, Albert Einstein, had his own thoughts on war. Albert Einstein is perhaps the most well known scientist of all time, and was one of the minds behind the creation of the atomic bomb. Although he did help think up the idea, he did not actually help build it, or condone the use of it. In fact, he was very against the A-bomb and war itself.
He once said, “I don’t know what kind of weapons will be used in the third world war, assuming there will be a third world war. But I can tell you what the Fourth world war will be fought with – stone clubs.” Einstein is saying that if there happens to be a third world war, the weapons that will be used will be so destructive that almost the whole world will be wiped out. The human race will then have to start over, and then the next war, the fourth world war, will be fought by cavemen with stone clubs. Einstein believed that intelligence and understanding were the key factors to achieving peace, but he also knew that as people get smarter, the weapons we use become more dangerous. Another quote that ties in with Einstein’s was made by an unknown author: “To preserve peace, we need weapons of smaller and men of larger caliber.” Like Einstein, whoever made this quote knows that instead of using our intelligence to build more horrible weapons, we should be thinking of ways to bring peace to the world.
I agree with all of the quotes I have mentioned except for Henry Ford’s. I do think that people’s intellect will be the main factor in gaining peace, but what Hitler said about defeating reason with terror and force also is true in the world right now. When America was attacked on September 11, even the smartest people in the world were dumbfounded. Osama bin Laden used terror and force to get his message across to the United States, and now a war has broken out. Intelligence could not bring peace between Osama bin Laden and America, so there was no other choice than to fight back. If we had known the attacks were going to take place, I do not think even reasoning with bin Laden would have stopped it. We would have had to use force to keep the attacks from happening.
Although there are a lot of people who think that intelligence is the main factor in preserving peace, I think that even the most intelligent people cannot stop war from happening. As long as we keep using our intelligence to create weapons, there is no way for us to achieve peace. People need to realize that fighting may achieve peace for a small amount of time, but that peace is eventually broken because people stop using their heads. War is stupid and it really solves nothing, and, as the song says, that is also what it is good for: nothing.
Bibliography
“Adolf Hitler.” On-line. Internet. 29 Dec. 2001. Available WWW:
“Albert Einstein.” On-line. Internet. 29 Dec. 2001. Available WWW:
http://stripe.colorado.edu/~judy/einstein/war.html
“Henry Ford.” On-line. Internet. 29 Dec. 2001. Available WWW: