A Separate Peace

     As much as we desire an orderly and predictable life in which we can go about our daily business and face our future, events can and do occur that set off a chain reaction that—at the very least--cause uncertainty and trepidation, but can also lead to cataclysmic consequences for us and those around us. The cause of the calamity, the reason for the change in trajectory of unfolding history, can be an individual act; one seemingly unrelated at the time to our situation and circumstance.

  

    A case in point. 

    On June 28, 1914, Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb nationalist, assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to that country’s throne, along with his wife Sophie. The royal couple was paying a state visit to Sarajevo in Bosnia.

    Most of us of a certain age are familiar with this story, having learned it in our history lessons, and how this act of violence proved to be the spark that ignited the powder keg that existed in European politics.

   Princip and his accomplices were subsequently arrested and, while being interrogated, implicated several members of the Serbian military.

  

   This set off a crisis when Austria-Hungary delivered an ultimatum to the Kingdom of Serbia which implied the threat of war if its demands weren’t met, but had the ulterior motive of eliminating Serbia as a factor in the Balkans and thereby strengthening Austria-Hungary’s position in that region and among its fellow European powers. The Austro-Hungarian government turned a cold shoulder to Serbian overtures and declared war. This, in turn, triggered reaction from other nations due to the various alliances that had been forged during the previous decades. Those reactions resulted in additional reactions along with miscalculations and misjudgments. Things fell apart, the center did not hold, and soon events spun out of control.

  Ironically, those alliances had been formed to maintain a balance of power on the continent and to insure each nation’s security by having allies promising to come to their defense to counter any aggressive action by a belligerent neighbor . And, up until then, it had proven a success.

    Declarations of war between different nations quickly followed, with two groups forming—the Allies and the Central Powers. The United States would eventually join the former. Millions of deaths, millions more suffering crippling wounds, civilian displacements along with untold ripples of repercussions would be the result. Europe—after over a century of relative peace and stability dating back to Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo in 1815—had returned to its habitual bloodletting.

     What if? That is always the tantalizing element of historical examination. What if Pricip and his accomplices had not felt compelled to assassinate the archduke or had failed? Would the powder keg have exploded eventually for some other reason? The forces of nationalism and desire for self-determination were widespread in that region, making the situation volatile. The Great Powers were, additionally, engaged in an arms race which heightened tensions and cast suspicion with their respective actions. German territorial ambitions, in particular, were apparently a concern. These conditions made Europe ripe for war and maybe it didn’t matter what spark caused the explosion; some act, somewhere by someone or for some reason or pretext, would sooner or later have ignited the passions.

    But then again, minus that act of violence, maybe the balance of power would have remained intact; maybe time and patience would have resolved the disputes, and the peace maintained. Or maybe the chain reaction would have gone off in a different direction, due to a different cause, and the bloodletting and upheaval would have been less profound.

     The overarching question of cause-and-effect is a common one in historical studies. Do the affairs of man possess inevitability based on political, economic and cultural factors that are tide-like in their occurrence; akin to an impersonal force of nature that leave us too often as helpless victims? Or are individuals, singly or collectively, the main factor—this school of thought being  that great people cause momentous events and can affect the course of history or that infamous people can do the same or that even the random act of a seemingly inconsequential person can set off a chain reaction of unknowable ramifications.

  

  Like many points of contention, the choice is not necessarily either-or, but rather to what degree each theory is valid in a given situation and scenario.

     Certainly individuals can and do influence and impact events—for good or ill, both directly and indirectly. What sort of world would have occurred had such towering figures as Plato and Aristotle, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Saint Paul, Joan of Arc, Queen Elizabeth I, Washington and Lincoln, or Hitler not existed?

   But then the inevitable follow-up question is this: Would any of them, as individuals, have been remembered or wielded the impact each did had not those impersonal forces of politics, economics, and culture aligned in a proper manner to allow their ideas and actions to create such a lastly difference?

   Would Lincoln have been Lincoln without the crucible of the Civil War? And what would have happened with his presidency, his legacy, and to this nation if John Wilkes Booth had not, by chance, learned the President would be attending the play that evening at Ford’s Theater?

  

  As Lincoln famously said, “I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events controlled me.”

  

    ONE OF THE MORE ARRESTING LINES THAT WAS WRITTEN AS A RESULT OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR came from the pen of Ernest Hemingway, appearing in a vignette found in his first book of short stories In Our Time. The character, Nick Adams, has been wounded during combat on the Italian Front (as was Hemingway). Moved to safety, feeling the pain from his injury, Nick looks over at his comrade in arms who’s also been wounded in the fighting. “Senta Rinaldi. Senta. You and me we’ve made a separate peace.”

   Hemingway would later use this idea in his novel A Farewell to Arms.

   Countless people, past and present, caught in the riptides of colossal events, have yearned and sought to create a separate peace. The thousands of Syrians fleeing from the brutal fighting in their home country towards the safety and sanctuary of Europe are an example of this. They, on the whole, are not terrorists seeking to infiltrate those nations, but rather families desperate to escape the death and destruction and regain a measure of order and predictability in their lives.

   

     They seek to make a separate peace.

    In the past couple of weeks, thanks in large part to the immediacy that now exists in our visual communications—ranging from smart phones that record activities to the ability to put those recordings on social media sites to the 24-7 reporting of cable news—we’ve seen and heard about two more black men being shot to death by police during arrests, the cold-blooded murders of five police officers in Dallas and then three officers in Baton Rouge, as well as a man driving a semi-truck in France that resulted in 84 people being killed and many others injured. Also, only a few weeks ago, 49 people were killed by an armed gunman at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida.

   Helping to amplify these acts of violence and possible terrorism is the fact that we’re in the midst of a presidential election entering its final stage and these acts have become part of the campaign and the national dialogue.  

   Terrible and tragic events occur. They have throughout history. Some occur randomly, without rhyme or reason. Others are linked by cause and effect, one act of violence begets another. Some are done in the name of a particular cause, as was the assassination that started World War I.

  

    Explanation is attempted. We seek an underlining reason or else a person or adversary to fix the blame on. The desire to make sense of what’s happening is understandable. But sometimes there is no discernable reason, no plausible explanation, no one to blame. And sometimes there is a reason and an identifiable culprit, so then the question is how do we respond?

   The reflex—an alarming one in my mind—is to tailor an explanation that fits a preconceived (perhaps politically expedient) narrative. The danger in doing so is that the rhetoric and calculation might ignite the powder keg of worries and concerns, of fear and suspicion, of anger and angst and even hate that exists.

  In a desire for electoral gain, the emotions are whipped up beyond what’s warranted or reasonable. That seems to be occurring. We seem to have a flock of Chicken Littles scurrying about.

  The possible outcome of such an explosion would be to further encourage and heighten the of us versus them mentality; to withdraw the welcoming hand; to abandon the moral stances of compassion, charity, and brotherhood (those lessons taught in Sunday School) in favor of erecting individual and social fortresses; to build walls and impose loyalty oaths; to look for scapegoats; to those who are different in looks or hold different political, social or religious beliefs; and to define various Americans mainly by race, skin color, national origin, religious affiliation, economic status, and sexual preference rather than by common goals and shared aspirations.

   “All things are filled with weariness,” said the Teacher in Ecclesiastics. This occurrence of violent acts—in our nation and elsewhere in the world—these sparks threatening to ignite the powder keg of dark passions; these events that seem to control us rather then we controlling them are a cause for such weariness.

   I remind myself not to make knee-jerk responses to the news of the day or to the harsh rhetoric I hear, the vitriol on public display, and the scorched-earth style of campaigning, but to step back and attempt to present a longer, more deliberative, and hopefully more reasoned response.

  It is not an easy task. The unfolding of human affairs, so much of it beyond anticipation or control, is relentless. The individual acts of violence that cause the trajectory to veer off in an unforeseeable direction and suddenly alter the dialogue are disheartening. At times it seems like fighting a grass fire on a windy day with a garden hose. Is it a futile effort? Likely, but you use whatever tool you have at hand; in my case the written word.

   Most of us, when all is said and done, are reactors, responding with our thoughts and behavior and ultimately our actions to the myriad of events and happenstances that occur. How we react to them reflects who we are, who we wish to be, and the world we hope to live in.

  Yet as we react to this and that occurrence, and feel at times caught in a riptide that threatens to overwhelm us, we need the guiding light of vision; the desire and purpose to seek a better world—not just for ourselves, our families, and our own kind, but for all of those who want only the blessings of life and liberty and an opportunity to pursue happiness.

  

    “America will never be destroyed from the outside,” said Lincoln. “If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”

   I won’t say ‘never,’ since the future is unknowable and must always to vigilant from such threats, but his warning is still valid.

   Such destruction—the loss of our freedoms--is possible if we succumb to the worries and concerns, the fears and suspicions, the anger and angst, and even hate that would divide us or if we allow events to control and overwhelm us to such an extent that we turn against each other, point the finger of blame, and embrace the choice of suppression and oppression. We must make a separate peace from that tide of history and from the attitude of exclusion rather than inclusion.

    It is this vision of unity, this embrace of humanity and shared aspirations that can sustain us no matter how trying and turbulent times might seem or daunting the challenges might appear to be.