War Thoughts

Apparently today is National Tug-of-War Tournament Day, though the actual event this year is being held in Prior Lake, Minnesota on August 1.

Wouldn't it be nice if this was how ALL wars were decided? A length of rope, an arbitrary line in the sand, one judge from each side, and a bunch of people pulling instead of shooting.

Tug of War has been around in one form or another since Egyptian times. It's most popular use was by Captain Richard Woodget in the late 1800s on the tall ship Cutty Sark to help keep his crews fit. Shortly after that clubs were formed in England for the sport. It was even an Olympic event from 1900 through 1920, when the number of games were reduced.

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THOUGHTS ON WAR

"Wars and elections are both too big and too small to matter in the long run. The daily work -- that goes on, it adds up." (Barbara Kingsolver)

"There never was a good war or a bad peace." (Benjamin Franklin)

"Everyone's a pacifist between wars. It's like being a vegetarian between meals." (Colman McCarthy)

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies - in the final sense - a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children." (Dwight D. Eisenhower)

"You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake." (Jeanette Rankin)

"Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living. We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount." (Omar Bradley)

"It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it." (Robert E. Lee)

[selected from Wisdom Quotes]

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WORDS for YOUR WEEK: "You can't say civilization don't advance ... for in every war, they kill you in a new way." (Will Rogers)

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