Statement from Eisenhower still profound

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

“This world in arms is not spending money alone.

“It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, and the hopes of its children.

“The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.

“It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 in population alone.

“It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.

“It is some 50 miles of concrete highway.

“We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat.

“We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.

“This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.

“This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”

This was President Eisenhower’s Iron Cross speech. He was a wartime general in World War II and recognized the cost of conflict and the toll it took on the essence of our existence. He was also painfully aware of the cost in human terms of loss of life and what it meant to so many loved ones, a cross he would have to bear. His concern for his fellow man in general and his lament for the greater good in particular cannot be denied.

How true Ike’s statement was. Without the threat of conflict, humanity could be humane, nations could care for their children and bombs would be replaced by technology to better mankind. Coming from a wartime general, this is profound, and a wakeup call.

Perhaps something we as members of the human race should strive for.