Let's remember by calling for peace

9:25am Thursday 8th November 2001

I stood in the High Street selling for Remembrance Day, shamed into volunteering by a veteran of the Second World War, now too frail to take his usual place.

As people of all ages and colours gradually filled my tin, I got to wondering if in future, my grandchildren will be asked to volunteer by veterans of present conflicts.

I thought of the high hopes my grandparents held when the United Nations was founded. That wars would be avoided by conciliation and negotiation.

That the gulf between the rich and poor nations would be diminished. That no big powers would dominate the world economically and or politically.

My idealism born in 1945 has reduced like the poppies in my box. People wear their poppies in remembrance and in sympathy. I wear mine and add anger to the shared emotions.

I rage at the millions which are spent in developing the technology of war, weapons designed to inflict wounds rather than kill, thus creating 'logistical' problems for the enemy. Smart missiles which cost the equivalent of a school or a small hospital which then fall on a factory producing aspirin or a Red Cross depot, cynically referred to as “collateral damage”.

At the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month when we are silent for two minutes should we not then raise a clamour for peace? Is it not time to eliminate causes of terrorism rather then inflict another kind of terrorism on the people of countries like Iraq and Afghanistan?

I am sure members of my family and my friends who died in the Second World War would want to see remembrance turned into a determination to put an end to wars.

F Ferebee

St John's Road

SE20

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