The Green caldron - University Library

December, 1957
MAN
It Doesn't Matter
Max Flandorfer
Rhetoric 102, Theme 6
HAS ALWAYS BEEN ABLE TO FIND SOME EXCUSE
for starting a war, and if he couldn't find a legitimate one he would go
out and dream one up or start the war for no reason at all. That has
will find a reason for starting
ilways been certain and always will be : Man
I war. It's always a holy war of some sort, for freedom, for land, for a better
ife. There is always this detestable search for the Holy Grail, and surely it
nust sicken the stomach of a reasonable man.
There is one reason for man going to war, one single reason for man
cilling his fellow man—he loves it. Always there is talk about horror and
^rief, but it still, always, seems to come out a big party with soul-stirring
)0ngs, pretty banners, and people being happily sad about leaving each other.
Sad? Every blood-lusting one of them loves every minute of it.
A few years ago we finished the latest "holy war" and, for a while, there
seemed to be no conceivable reason for another. How long ago was it, or how
short ? How soon again before we can take out our little flags and wave them
iround ?
Now it is capitalist aggressors and Communists war mongers ! There are
;he oppressed slaves of Wall Street and the oppressed workers of Communism,
rhere is a new aggressor and a new oppressed. We have an excuse : all we
leed now is a trigger. What will the trigger be ?
A Communist moon is spinning over free American soil. It can be taken
iown and twisted and bent out of shape. It can be heated in the furnace of
luman hate and greed, and forged into a wonderful trigger. That is as good
I reason as any, and God will lead us. And if there is a God, with what red
lands he must lead us. Somehow, some way, that first bomb will, must, ex-
plode.
When a bomb explodes and kills someone, who can say what was the
;ause? Was it the powder in the bomb or was it the fuse? Was it the hand
;hat dropped the bomb or the order that caused the bomb to be dropped ? Was
t the person who paid to have the bomb made or the man who was paid to make
;he bomb? And what is the justification for exploding a bomb, or does there
lave to be any ?
To the man lying on the ground with his life spread red and messy around
lim—it doesn't matter. To the mother holding a mass of broken bones and
iripping flesh that was once a child—it doesn't matter. To a child sitting cry-
ing and terrified next to a piece of his mother—it doesn't matter. It doesn't
matter.
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