XPost: alt.books.cs-lewis   
   From: ahnemann@optonline.net   
      
   John wrote:   
   I don't think your 'cowards' description of yourself   
   falls in line with what Lewis was talking about when   
   he expressed such thoughts. He probably didn't have   
   any problem at all with pacifism per say.   
      
   I write:   
   Read 'Why I Am Not a Pacifist' in _The Weight of Glory_ for Lewis' actual   
   take on Pacifism.   
   It is a most carefully reasoned case against pacifism.  This case is   
   distinctly not about grumblings of a veteran.  And beside this argument _by_   
   a veteran of a terrible war, my more complacent pacifism is more like   
   cowardice.  That is the context in which I made my comments.   
      
   John wrote:   
    You would think that over time   
   he would mellow a bit and come to see some of that   
   thinking as being not too realistic. It seems, though,   
   that he carried at least some of that resentment to   
   the grave with him.   
      
   I write:   
   Just a comment.  Lewis was the ultimate reasoned realist, imo.  That is why,   
   though I sometimes like not to agree with him, I'm continually drawn to his   
   arguments.  For instance he writes:  "I think the art of life consists in   
   tackling each immediate evil as well as we can.  To avert or postpone one   
   particular war by wise policy, or to render one particular campaign shorter   
   by strength and skill or less terrible by mercy to the conquered and the   
   civilians is more useful than all the proposals for universal peace that   
   have ever been made; just as the dentist who can stop one toothache has   
   deserved   
   better of humanity than all the men who think they have some scheme for   
   producing a perfectly healthy race."   
   He sees this imperative in light of writings of church fathers, Scripture   
   and informed first and foremost by Divine Reality.  (WG 52- and the entire   
   case against pacifism WG 53+)   
      
   As much as I would like Lewis to have come out squarely against war, he did   
   not.   
   He never advances facile answers to the thorniest of human problems.   
      
   Blessings,   
   Ann   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)