War continues to divide people, to change them forever, and I write about it both because I want people to understand the absolute futility of war, the 'pity of war' as Wilfred Owen called it.
It could be said that all armed conflicts are a ludicrous and shameful waste of lives, but World War I has a special place in the history of futility - a war without clear purpose, a war whose resolution would ultimately make the world a far worse place.
I grew up being told by my parents each time they went off to war that they may explode, so I needed to know how things like the gadgets in the kitchen worked.
A pint of sweat, saves a gallon of blood.
I don't like fantasy where a king snaps his fingers and suddenly a whole army appears and goes off to war - he's got to feed them, he's got to pay them, he's got to take care of the camp followers and the gamblers and the people who cause disorder.
At the first rumors of war, timid investors in various government stock, being panic-stricken, sell out, to their loss and the gamblers' gain.
Every time we walk along a beach some ancient urge disturbs us so that we find ourselves shedding shoes and garments or scavenging among seaweed and whitened timbers like the homesick refugees of a long war.
Politics are very much like war. We may even have to use poison gas at times.
When you write a two thousand page history of the Second World War, the deportations and the concentration camps will take up five pages, and the gas chambers perhaps 20 lines.
If you take a book of a thousand pages on the Second World War, in which 50 million people died, the concentration camps occupy two pages and the gas chambers ten or 15 lines, and that's what one calls a detail.
When gasoline and rubber are rationed, electric power and transport facilities are becoming increasingly scarce, and manpower shortages are developing, it is difficult for people to understand their increased use for other than the most vital needs of war.
Really, when it comes to gay rights, there's two wars going on. The first war is political. But the culture war is over.
You could tell that America was gearing up for war.
'Gears Of War' is one of my favourite games that I immersed myself in playing for long time, and Mr. Cliff Bleszinski is one of the greatest game creators that I respect.
During the Cold War, the United States took its friends where it found them. If they were willing to cast their lot with us, from the Shah to Gen. Pinochet, we welcomed them. Democratic dissidents like Jawaharlal Nehru in India and Olof Palme in Sweden got the back of our hand.
I grew up with the Gene Kelly look at war. The cheerful kind of stories you tell about a horrendous war.
If there is not the war, you don't get the great general; if there is not a great occasion, you don't get a great statesman; if Lincoln had lived in a time of peace, no one would have known his name.
Good teaching is creating really interesting generalizations out of war stories.
So often, generalizations don't apply to Catholic voters. Catholics are concerned about the war, the economy, about issues like abortion, issues pertaining to the budget and funding Medicaid and Medicare and what happens to the environment.
Every year, we ask our donors to dig deeper. And every year, they gladly, generously comply. It is now up to us to find ways and means to forestall the day when they cannot - or will not. Or the consequences for people in war zones could be disastrous.
