If we go through the history of the world we would find that the history of mankind is full of violence. Though there have been great men like Gautam Buddha, Christ and Mahatma Gandhi, who taught the world lessons of nonviolence and peace, and though they achieved some success in their mission, yet the whole history is an arration of victory of swords. Violence is in the blood of men. Survival of the fittest is the law of the nature. The weak have to suffer injustice at the hands of the strong.
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So far as peace and its maintenance is concerned, everybody wants peace. Everybody would agree that there should be complete peace in the world. Nobody wants war and no one would like to claim to be a defender of war. War is bad and peace is certainly good for the world. Peace brings happiness, prosperity and stability. Everybody condemns war because it results in destruction, misery and loss of life. But peace has unfortunately all along been pious wish and a dream.
The basic question, therefore, is how to prevent war. Some people may say that the best security for peace is peace. They may argue that those who live by the sword shall perish by the sword. They may also assert that preparation for war and armaments have failed to prevent war that they are themselves the real cause of wars. They may express the high hope that with better understanding and wider sympathy war would become a thing of the past.
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But there are some persons who hold the view that preparedness for war in the best security for peace. They may give you a number of instances to prove their point of view. They may also refer to the pages of history where nations and races have lived for centuries by the sword. Such instances are common when stronger nations have swallowed weaker nations for no fault of theirs. Perhaps their only fault was that-they were weak.
Preparedness is necessary in every sphere of life. Unpreparedness is very dangerous for a nation in the world of today. Every nation should be so powerful and prepared as to resist the evil intention of its neighboring powers. Then, if a nation is fully prepared no nation would ordinary dare to play and foul game with it. The example of Hitler is before our eyes. He became a danger for the whole of the Europe because he knew that European powers were not ready to meet his attack. Had European powers been fully prepared, Hitler would not have dared to launch an aggression. It is a sin to be week or to be unprepared. A weak and unprepared nation provides indirect encouragement to others to mount an attack on it.
Martin Luther once said that war was necessary evil. If we agree with him then preparedness for war is a must. Facts of life would have to be faced boldly, Pious wish of peace is not going to help any country out of danger. Whether one likes or not, it is very necessary that every country should keep itself fully prepared to meet any eventuality. It is not then that it can survive.
America and Russia are two great powers of the world. The race of armaments between them is continued. Each of the two trying hard to expand its area of political and economic influence in the world. As a matter of fact the two countries are enemies of each-other.
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These countries have huge stockpiles of deadly weapons and ammunitions. They are known as super powers. They have manufactured atom bombs and hydrogen bombs. They want to exterminate each-other. But none of them can dare to play and mischief with the other. Why? The answer is quite simple. Each of the two is fully prepared to meet the onslaught of other. They are aware of the fact that the other party is also fully prepared. They would not fight because they are afraid of each-other. Preparedness of these countries for wars has brightened the chance of peace in the world. At the moment any slackness in their preparedness would prove fatal to them. Each of them is security against war as long as it is strong.
Many instances may be cited where the threat of intervention by a powerful nation stopped a war or saved world peace. In the case of Korean war, war in Indo-China and China’s threatened attack on Formusa, it was the threat of America that saved the world from deadly wars. In 1956 when Britain and France attacked Egypt, Russia gave them a 12-hours ultimatum to vacate aggression else it would intervene, and the result was that the war stopped. Take another case. China attacked India in 1962, because it knew fully well that India was completely unprepared to meet the aggression. India suffered humiliating defeat because of its unpreparedness.
After its defeat in 1971 Pakistan will not try to pinprick India because it has seen that India is more than prepared to repel any aggression. A top politician of the world has compared the big powers to wolves. His opinion is that so long as there are wolves in the world, there will be no need of arms, because they alone can put some fear into the heart of the wolves. War is bad. It is to be condemned in strongest terms. But who care for condemnation? It is only strength and power that can prevent war or can work as an instrument for peace. Weakness is an invitation to the aggression. Therefore the best way for preserving peace is to be prepared for war.