To Put an End to War?

¯ “Last night I had the strangest dream I ever dreamed before; I dreamed the world had all agreed to put an end to war…” ¯

What I thought was a children’s song from the 1980s, I now discover was written, not for children, but as a ‘peace movement’ song, written in 1950 by American song writer, Ed McCurdy.

I first found it in a children’s song book and taught it to nearly 100 small children in the school where I was teaching in the late 1980s.

I had not heard it sung before and so put my interpretation to the music.

It is only recently that I have heard it (via YouTube), sung by the likes of Pete Seeger, Simon and Garfunkel and Johnny Cash.

Although the same song, it sounds a little different from the one the children sang and (especially Pete Seeger’s version) is sometimes in an almost rollicking, hillbilly style and sounds even a bit ‘twee’.

I have to say that I preferred the way my choir of children sang it many years ago.

 But I am getting off the track of what I wished to say, which was that the song needs reviving  -  and reviving in a BIG way.

When it was first written, World War 2 had only ended five years before. When the likes of Johnny Cash performed it, it was as comment on the state of the awful Vietnam war of the 1960s and 70s.

And, here we are now with the most horrendous wars and terrorism known to man proliferating across the globe.

We are in the throes of anger and hate overload, but it seems that, as long as humans are on Earth, they (we?) will never learn that war is pointless.

I’m convinced that the majority of people agree with the sentiments portrayed in the little song and I (and most others) know that the way to live in harmony is not to fight but to submerge ourselves in kindness towards others.

LOVE IS ALL THAT MATTERS.

When will we learn?

‘Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.’

(Dwight D. Eisenhower, From a speech before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 16, 1953)

 

Last night I had the strangest dream
I ever dreamed before
I dreamed the world had all agreed
To put an end to war.
I dreamed I saw a mighty room
The room was filled with men
And the paper they were signing said
They'd never fight again.

And when the papers all were signed
And a million copies made
They all joined hands end bowed their heads
And grateful prayers were prayed.
And the people in the streets below
Were dancing round and round
And guns and swords and uniforms
Were scattered on the ground.

Last night I had the strangest dream
I ever dreamed before
I dreamed the world had all agreed
To put an end to war.

 
Ed McCurdy. (1950)

 

 

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