THE EDITOR, Sir:
MARJORIE STAIR, always thoughtful, honest and courageous, outdid herself in the Financial Gleaner of Friday, December 14.
She summarises the frightful story of land mines that already flout the Geneva Convention. She points out that the United States of America and a few other rogue states (my words) have refused to sign the more specific agreement against the use of these horrible machines also that the makers sell them cheap and remove them at 50 times the selling price.
She also refers to the "logic of war" as discussed in the Pacific Research Society's book, The Day Man Lost, Hiroshima 6 August 1945. It sums up the logic of war as making mankind more and more inhuman.
There was one time and place I know of where civilised warfare was an enduring tradition. The Cherokee Indians of North America inhabited what is now the westernmost quarter of the state of North Carolina and the eastern part of the adjoining state of Tennessee. There were many tribes bound into two or three 'nations'. When two tribes or nations had a serious dispute to settle, they joined battle in the following way.
The 'army' or each side consisted of 15 or 20 expert players of a game that was the ancestor of modern Lacrosse. Each player had a very small version of a Lacrosse stick strapped to each forearm, extending beyond the head, the hand grasping the stick and helping to guide it. The missile, not a rubber ball but a smooth stone, had to be returned right away to keep it from falling to the ground and causing a big scrimmage. The only way the stone could be retained for any length of time was by its being caught in a player's mouth.
By the end of the game, the participants on both sides had lost most of their teeth, but there was no loss of life. The ensuing peace conference was a grand feast enjoyed by both sides with no need for lengthy discussions of terms, because all points of dispute had already been settled by the winner of the game of war.
How long do you suppose we must wait before the world as a whole attains that level of civilised conduct?
I am, etc.,
JOHN SEARS
96 3/4 Old Hope Road
Kingston 6
