My Place with Peace
By David Loesch
Often times I find myself worrying uncontrollably. It is not that I have some sort of mental disorder or anything, I simply find myself out of place in this world that is so full of death and destruction, yet so void of the kind of unity that should be felt in the hearts of every living person. Philip Noel-Baker, a steadfast promoter of disarmament once said, “Against a great evil, a small remedy does not produce a small result; it produces no result at all.”[2] Alone I could not possibly conquer such a formidable opponent as hatred. Where do I go with this positive passion that loses direction in the face of hopelessness? The inspiration I receive from historical figures such as Gandhi or Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. often lay dormant within me until the stagnation breaks apart into misdirected hostility toward the same world that I care about enough to make myself upset in the first place. After my encounter with Philip Noel-Baker, I would learn to redirect my unpleasant view of the world toward working to change it as Martin Luther King had- always working toward his goals in peace regardless of the violent opposition he encountered.
(Dr. King)
[3]
(King’s College)
Bob Dylan’s obscure lyrics allow me to vent my uncontrollable
disdain as I escape from the horror, ignorance, and death coming from my
picture-box. “There must be some kind of way out of here, said the joker to the
thief, too much confusion and I can’t get no relief!”[4] This kind of pessimism is by no means an
attitude I support, but is, on occasion, a nice break from intolerable pain
that strikes my body when I hear the blood-curdling term War and the atrocious words that always seem to be following it.
[5] In my regular venting sessions of song, I
often find myself lightheaded and red in the face after screaming the outro to All Along the Watchtower which repeats,
“FIRE! FIRE! FIRE!” trying desperately to rid myself of the horrible mental
images of recent tragic events. It was then that it happened. Once again, lost
in the moment, my passion had taken me out of my body as I lost all personal
characteristics and turning into an unstoppable force with the sole purpose of cleansing
myself of images of destruction. Only this time, when I regained consciousness,
I was no longer in my apartment; I was now sitting alongside Philip Baker with
a beautiful river flowing behind him which I recognized to be within the
borders of King’s College in 
[6].
(King’s College) (Image of war)
He has the grandest of smiles on his face and his
subtle movements seem to mimic the smooth and peaceful flow of the river behind
him. With tender care and enough optimism to force even Nietzsche to his knees,
he kindly says, “Hello friend.” This sharp contrast from my previously
cult-like incantations set me free, and at last I am myself and my smile has
been returned to me. With my new awareness I look around and wonder, “How did I
get here? Have I dreamed myself here in hope of finding comfort or am I simply hallucinating
because I have forgotten to breathe?” An answer was not possible at the moment,
but what I was sure of was that my soul was no longer in my normal seventeen-year-old
body, and therefore must have gotten here through some sort of alchemy. For
some reason I seemed to just fit into
my new location, and in an instance I was not a misplaced student from the
[7]
Baker was
contently writing something. I caught a glance and saw that it was dated
The idea that a war could be fabricated from the sole act of preparation for war was indeed a fascinating concept to me. Flashing back to my childhood, the question, “Which came first: the chicken or the egg?” was now answered: they both came together. Creator and created were the same thing, and the occurrence of either would result in the creation of the other. With this basic association I could now begin to understand his ingenious philosophies of peace and goals for disarmament. “You see,” he continued, “the production of weapons by one side brings fear to the other side. In such a fearful state, human nature is to respond in a manner that will ensure survival which in this case, for the other side, is to produce more weapons.”[8] Suddenly my strange expedition to the past seemed to have a purpose. I now understood that war was not so much one group of fools boasting their ostensible abilities as if the wars’ destruction was some side-effect of pride, but rather it was much more a fearful and cowardly action caused by the weakness in the character of a nation’s people. With so few exchanged words, Baker was able to communicate more to me than I have yet to encounter from another source outside of myself.
(Philip Noel-Baker)
[9] Philip
Baker (who later became Philip Noel-Baker) majored in international law because
he wanted to bridge the gap between one man and his counterparts in another
small region of this great big world. By trusting one another and eliminating
the fear of death, he believed we could all accomplish so much more by
investing our time and energy into medicine, art, and feeding the starving
masses rather than protecting ourselves from the other people’s forms of
protection.[10] He was
always working hard, for the cause, and never for himself. After doing his best
to warn the world of the possible horrors that could arise from large alliances
with stockpiles of weaponry, 1914 came crashing in along with World War I, and
he showed that he did not fear war. Upon a later visit with him, I asked him
about his wartime accomplishments, and he told me of the Mons Star he received
from France in 1915, the Silver Medal for Military Valor (1917) and the Croce
di Guerra in 1918 all of which were recieved from his peaceful work with the
First British Ambulance Unit. “The greatest thing war has ever brought anyone
was the encounter I had with Irene Noel, who I would come to love and marry,”
he once told me as he shed a single tear that can only be made by an old man
longing for his lost wife. His selflessness which many believe resulted from
his Quaker upbringing makes me aspire to be more like him. I had begun to lose
hope after my brief period of time on this earth, and my distant encounters of
tragedy, which I had only read about in newspapers, could not even compare to
the horrors seen by my elders in such atrocious wars that came before my time.
However, Baker never lost his optimism even through World War I, the failure of
the
A true renaissance man, Baker was also an
Olympic athlete, a Member of Parliament, a vice-principal of
My encounter with such a beautiful person instilled within me a newly found confidence and resultant desperate desire for immediate change that filled my body as the negative attitude and hatred for those who hate disappeared from me as though I were going through some sort of spiritual catharsis. I needed to know more. “Can I do anything to help you in your tasks?” I asked him as I felt it was necessary for me to do something for this noble cause. “Our task for now is to try and unite the peace lovers abroad,” he declared, “only when we all actively fight for our goals, can we actually achieve them.” His passion was spilling over his words and I realized that such fervor was not considered when the English language was devised. My mind wandered into the realm of possibilities the future entailed. At that moment, our country’s history after 1912 was not yet fulfilled; each and every now was the future, and now my friend Baker and I had no limitations, and were capable of anything. It was even possible for me to try and push for “a sacrifice of military liberty to which no Government in present-day conditions can be expected to agree.”[12]
At this point the
excitement was too much to bear and once again, I woke up screaming with joy, back
in my body, my guitar in hand, my face no longer red, and my head restored to
its normal weight. In a calm serenity I realized that I had no time to allow
negative feelings and a pessimist attitude to dominate me. While the idea that
I could shape 1912 and on was nothing more than an unrealistic dream, my new
attitude toward the future left me with infinite possibilities that I could
explore for the many years I had left on this wonderful planet. My place in the
world was now established. I attend school at the
After my dazed encounter with him that one evening, I found that a piece of him was always going to be with me, for he defined himself by his cause (disarmament and peace) which upon my adoption of it, brought a part of him into me. His willingness to say what needs to be said regardless of the societal prejudices against his open-mindedness is admirable. During the Cold War he pushed disarmament, saying, “Their sincerity can only be tested by offering them the detailed text of a controlled disarmament system that would translate into reality the measures which they say they will accept.”[13] When I am confronted with a decent argument, I can hear him declare, “War is a damnable, filthy thing and has destroyed civilization after civilization - that is the essence of my belief”[14] While the pessimistic dare to question the possibilities of peace, Baker helps me, “Defeatism about the feasibility of plans for disarmament and ordered peace has been the most calamitous of all the errors made by democratic governments in modern times.” [15]
Having this new
alliance in my war on terror, which
in this case actually has meaning because my
war does not contain terror within itself, puts me in a comfort zone regardless
of my surroundings, my occupation, or my current center of learning. It is in
this state of goal-oriented relaxation where I am capable of doing as much as I
can to complete my current task of unifying our brothers in this venture. As I
educate myself at the
I am a student of
the
(
[17]
My first week of school a teacher of mine asked me, “Why are you here?” Now I have a response, and the task that Noel-Baker assigned me to is just the beginning.
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