“I have just heard the news…. Russians 60 miles from Berlin. It does look as if something decisive might happen soon. The appalling destruction and misery of this war mount hourly; destruction of what should be (and indeed is) the common wealth of Europe, and the world, if mankind were not so besotted, wealth the loss of which will affect us all, victors or not. Yet people gloat to hear of the endless lines, 40 miles long, of miserable refugees, women and children pouring West, dying on the way. There seems to be no bowels of mercy or compassion, no imagination, left in this dark diabolic hour. By which I do not mean that it may not all, in the present situation, mainly (not solely) created by Germany, be necessary and inevitable. But why gloat?! We were supposed to have reached a stage of civilization in which it might still be necessary to execute a criminal, but not to gloat, or to hang his wife and child by him while the orc-crowd hooted.”
At the time of V-E day J. R. R. Tolkien wrote again to his son Christopher;
“It all seems rather a mockery to me, for the War is not over …. But it is of course wrong to fall into such a mood, for the wars are always lost, and the War always goes on; and it is no good growing faint!”
“In these two brief excerpts from Tolkien’s letters we find much of what has gone into the tale of the Ring, and much of what makes it Biblical;
1.) The primary emphasis on compassion.
2.) The tragic sense of the ‘besotted’ human condition.
3.) The sense that all sides are to blame, not just ‘theirs.’
4.) The renunciation of ‘self-righteousness,’ and ‘gloating.’
5.) The necessity of taking extreme action under pressure.
6.) The conviction that all of life is an ongoing battle.
7.) The certainty that the Shadow will always gather strength and return.
8.) The determination to persevere
We find all of this in the story,front and center. And we find something more; the overarching presence of the unseen hosts of heaven, flashing through the work in brief strokes of unforgettable brilliance.”
Fleming Rutledge
The Battle for Middle Earth; Tolkien’s Divine Design in the Lord of the Rings — p. 14-15
War should be avoided at almost all costs. It is a terror inducing phenomenon that results not only in dead but the living dead. However it has happened in history that war is forced upon a people and when that happens then war it must be. And if forced into war then our mindset towards the enemy must be what noted Presbyterian Deacon Gen. Thomas Jackson’s was. When a member of Gen. Stonewall Jackson’s staff asked, “What can we do about this kind of barbaric behavior?”
The Presbyterian Deacon Jackson replied, his voice trembling with rage, “Kill ’em. Kill ’em all.”
