Wouldn't it be wonderful if, for just a couple of days around Christmas, there could be some real peace on this Earth? Or would we hate it? It's hard to tell how mankind might react to peace, for throughout recorded history it has never been tried.
It might start in the most publicized places, with the guns in the hills surrounding Sarajevo falling silent as the militant Serbs decide there would be no irreversible damage to their manhood if they took a couple of days off from shelling helpless women and children.It might spread to Somalia, where clans whose ancient hatreds we do not begin to understand might decide that killing each other, and the people who came to feed them, could safely be postponed for a couple of days. It might spread to Northern Ireland, where people blasting away at each other to the greater glory of the same God might pause to consult with their creator to see how he rated their strategy and tactics.
South Africa could use a little real peace for a day or two, as could all the rest of that infinitely complicated and endlessly bloody continent. And Sri Lanka, and Cambodia, and the warring states of the former Soviet Union. Just a couple of days of peace wouldn't kill anyone.
We could use it here, too. The United States is not at war anywhere, except with ourselves. We love wars; accordingly, we declare a war on poverty and a war on crime and a war on drugs and a war on AIDS and a hundred lesser battles and skirmishes. The only way we seem to get motivated to get anything done is to declare a war. We have never declared peace, even for a couple of days. Peace, obviously, is something to which we accord a very low priority.
Could we stand a couple of days of peace in the nation's capital, or would the strange lack of gunfire in the city's streets seem ominous to the residents and drive all the news media mad? Silence can be very threatening where there is no peace of mind.
There is no danger of a couple of days of peace; we attack each other when there are no outsiders to war against. A couple of millennia ago a man walked the Earth advocating a different manner of behavior. A few people were convinced and a great many more pretended to be, but it never really caught on.