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"I was born in 1944 to conscientious objector parents who had held on to their beliefs in spite of the terrible events of World War II and in the face of much social opprobrium."
So begins Diana Francis, a former president of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation, who has spent much of her life working to find practical and nonviolent ways to put an end to what Muriel Lester once called the "cannibalism" of war.
It's hard to keep an accurate count of all the wars fought since the end of World War II. Savage and unremitting, they often defy reason, and are generally fought in the name of economic, political, religious, and tribal supremacy. The real motives are always camouflaged with appeals to "freedom," or some other false rationale. It also helps if one side or the other has a vital natural resource such as oil. Convincing people to send their young to war is then a relatively...