For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape.
—I Thess. 5:3
4301 Startling Statistics
Only 8 percent of the time since the beginnings of recorded history has the world been entirely at peace, according to statistics. In 3521 years, only 286 have been warless. Eight thousand treaties have been broken in this time.
4302 Average Treaty: Two Years
“Since 1919, the nations of Europe have signed more than 200 treaties of peace. Each treaty, simply another scrap of paper, was broken more easily than consummated.
“From the year 1500 B.C. to A.D. 1860 more than 8,000 treaties of peace, meant to remain in force forever, were concluded. The average time they remained in force was two years.”
—Ministers’ Research Service
4303 Middle East’s Major Cease-Fires
Record of major cease-fires within 25 years between Israeli and Arab forces—and the results:
June 1948: United Nations ordered a cease-fire on June 11 to end war that followed Israel’s declaration of its independence. Fighting broke out again on July 7, less than a month later.
July 1948: A second truce took effect on July 18, but lasted only into October.
February 1949: Egypt and Israel signed an armistice agreement on February 24. Similar pacts were signed by Israel with other warring powers in the following months. The truce lasted seven years before war exploded again.
November 1956: Egypt on one hand and Israel, Britain and France on the other accepted a United Nations cease-fire order on November 6 in the Sinai, ending a war that began eight days earlier. U. N. troops were based in the region to guard truce until they withdrew at Egypt’s request in May 1967, before the Six-Day War.
June 1967: Egypt agreed to a U.N.-ordered cease-fire with Israel on June 8, fourth day of the Six-Day War. Syria came to terms two days later. An uneasy peace was broken three years later.
August 1970: Escalating clashes between Egypt and Israel along the Suez Canal were ended with a cease-fire initiated by the United States. The truce lasted three years—until the outbreak of a new conflict on Oct. 6, 1973.
On March 26, 1980, Egypt and Israel formally signed a Peace Treaty on the lawn of the US White House. This ostensibly ended 31 years of hostilities between the two countries. With numerous critics and possibility of some misreading of the treaty’s wordings, it remains to be seen how long the treaty would last.
—US News and World Report
4304 Two Minutes’ Peace Yearly
The Armistice was signed on November 11, 1918, and since then for every year of war there have been two minutes of peace.
4305 Greatest War Indemnity
The greatest money indemnity ever asked and paid promptly was the $1,000,000,000 which the new-born Empire of Germany demanded from the conquered French in 1871. The French could not bear to see those uniformed German men in possession of every city of France, and every peasant gave liberally of his meager earnings to pay the indemnity.
—J. H. Bomberger
4306 No Example In History
Summer Wells, one-time U.S. Undersecretary of State, observed: “History does not record any example of a military alliance between great nations which has endured. The result of such alliances has invariably been that the partners have jockeyed for individual influence and for selfish advantage. At best they have given rise to only a temporary and precarious balance of power.”
4307 Churchill’s Peace Parable
Winston Churchill gives this clever peace parable:
Once upon a time all the animals in the zoo decided they would disarm, and they arranged to hold a conference to decide the matter. The rhinoceros said that the use of teeth in war was barbarous and horrible, and ought strictly to be prohibited by general consent. Horns, which were mainly defensive weapons, would, of course, have to be tolerated. The buffalo, stag, and porcupine said they would vote with the rhino; but the lion and the tiger took a different view. They defended teeth, and even claws, as honourable weapons.
Then the bear spoke. He proposed that both teeth and horns should be banned. It would be quite enough if animals would be allowed to give each other a good hug when they quarrelled. No one could object to that. It was so fraternal, and would be a great step toward peace. However, all the other animals were offended with the bear, and they fell into a perfect panic.
4308 The Peace Symbol
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Peace Symbol was well-known. Defenders of this symbol cited its origin in England in 1958 when it was used for the Aldermaston Peace Walk, taking the two signals in the semaphore code for the let ters N and D to signify “Nuclear Disarmament.”
To detractors, however, it looked like the cross broken and reversed. If so, this was the symbol used as far back as the Middle Ages by godless forces. It would therefore be a sacrilegious symbol.
4309 Epigram On Peace Settlements
• In an address to the United States Senate in 1919, President Woodrow Wilson said, “The League of Nations is the only hope of mankind.” How futile and tragic such hope proved to be!
• At the U.N. Security Council Soviet Ambassador Yakov Malik declared: “We are firmly in favor of all—I repeat all states and peoples in the Near East being ensured peace, security and the inviolability of their borders. The Soviet Union is ready to take part in the correspondent guarantees.”
• John Foster Dulles: The world will never have lasting peace so long as men reserve for war the finest human qualities. Peace, no less than war, requires idealism and self-sacrifice and a righteous and dynamic faith.
• General Douglas MacArthur said, “Men since the beginning of time have sought peace … military alliances, balances of power, leagues of nations, all in turn failed, leaving the only path to be by way of the crucible of war. The utter destructiveness of war now blots out this alternative.”
• Bill Vaughan: It wasn’t too long ago that you could finance a pretty good war for what six months of peace costs today.
—Bell Syndicate
See also: Treaties .