Everyone has had to learn calmness midst trial.

With the signing of the armistice, November 11, 1918, something altogether splendid in human history began to come to an end. The cessation of actual hostilities gave an opportunity to those who had been participating in the war to look back over the months and years of the great struggle to find its meaning in human terms. Their spirits had been called into action. They had been led for the time being into something like the fullness of life. They had made the great venture, achieved the victorious attitude, won the triumphs of faith. The war had in fact been more and more truly a moral protest as it drew to a close. It had enlisted the noblest young life of the nations. It had attained spiritual significance for the world. What was needed, when the center of activity shifted from warfare with guns to the regulation of far-reaching social issues among the nations, that the world might win lasting peace, was that the moral and spiritual values should be recognized and interpreted while there was yet time, while the impression of the war's effect upon the souls of men should still be fresh and strong.

In this volume I have tried to gather some of the human impressions and permit them to point the way to their own interpretation so far as possible. I have not narrated events as mere history but only by way of suggesting their effect on the inner life. I have assumed that in endeavoring to learn what the war has meant for those who fought it we have been asking the great questions of human existence anew, we have been wondering what part the divine providence played in the war, how it affected those who came closest to the enemy and witnessed sorrow and suffering on every hand in the war countries. We have also asked what results it produced on human belief, notably with respect to religion, the human soul, death, the future life, and the compensations of the spiritual world.

FROM THE PREFACE TO

ON THE THRESHOLD
OF THE
SPIRITUAL WORLD
A Study of Life and Death Over There

HORATIO W. DRESSER, Ph.D.

1919

http://www.archive.org/details/onthresholdofspi00dresrich

Someone at Toastmasters on Thursday related stories from WWII. He'd been given the stories by Lefty to pass on to future generations. When the transport carrier landed on the beach the front would drop, some one would yell "Wall down" and they'd run across the sand. The trouble was the carrier wasn't on the beach, the water was 3 feet deep they couldn't run and when the wall went down the enemy machine gun fire killed all those ready to embark. Lefty was spared. He was on his knees at the back being sick. Somehow he made it to the beach, walking through 3 feet of an ocean by now turned red.

Later he was part of a unit that went ahead of the allies to find and report back the enemies position. They found each other. His unit divided in two, agreeing to meet at a farm house and take their stand if necessary. His group made haste and in their retreat they saw the others surrender to buy them time. From the farm house they saw them being interrogated and one by one be executed by the officer in charge.

Lefty prevented the others from leaving for revenge. "We're bigger than they are".

When the allied front joined them the enemy surrended. They were ALL kept alive. The officer was found a few miles away, dead. His own men had turned on him. Perhaps to stop any future carnage.

Dresser says WWI was about greed and one country forcing it's will on others. I suppose WWII meets those requirements.

I wonder if the response to 9/11 was an "eye-for-an-eye" or "we're bigger than they are".

I heard someone on the radio talk of interviewing detainees and treating them with respect. "We're not like you've been led to believe".

And other reports of techniques that we would have considered deplorable and degrading in the past. We live on a continent where some sports mimic the ancient Roman gladiators.

I suppose history will judge whether it was for greed and revenge rather than freedom.

Gone are the days of the telegraph wire. Radio and Television play second fiddle to the internet.

I suppose someday a true leader will lead by Divine inspiration and ask "What's right".

Until then we forgive and we love life, as precious as it is.