General calls NATO role into question

A recent speaker at the University College and Science for Peace lecture series was Major General Leonard Johnson, former commandant of Canada’s National Defence, College in Kingston, Ontario. A member of the International Generals for Peace and Disarmament, he discussed Canada’s commitment to NATO pointing out that of the 2.6 million land forces in Europe, the total number of Canadian forces stands now at 5,400. Current NATO doctrine, said General Johnson, offers us the choice between defeat and suicide. He claimed that Canada must insist on the right to dissent from official NATO policy. Arguing that we must substitute an ideology of peace for the current ideology of war, General Johnson suggested that the single goal of national security policy should be the prevention of nuclear war. Generals for Peace and Disarmament, whose membership consists of retired NATO military officers, expects to meet for the second time in May, 1985, with retired Warsaw Treaty Organization officers.

I feel the dread

I feel the dread, and the sun burns in me, burns like a fever. The world is full of war, and at home, crime resembles a war. Men flock to the city leaving their fields to weeds, their tools to rust. Plowshares now are beaten into swords. It’s bad in Asia, bad in Europe, bad … No treaties hold, no laws hold, nothing but Mars, blood red … He holds it all, hurtling through the sky in his chariot. I feel those wheels rumble. I feel the sway of speed. The horses are mad and running faster They ought to check. They ought to answer the reins. There ought to be reins. But there are none.

Virgil, The Georgics I, 29 BC, Read to Emperor Augustus (translated by David R. Slavitt, New York, Doubleday, 1972). Quoted by General Johnson in his Toronto Lecture.