Robert C. Koehler: A permanent structure of peace
Suddenly a shard of history comes flying at me from the ebbing days of World War II, hitting me in the heart. You mean world leaders (not to mention all the rest of us) were serious about transcending — for good — the hell the world had just been through and . . . ending war?
In February 1945, President Franklin Roosevelt, on his return from the Yalta Conference with Great Britain and the Soviet Union, and two months before he died, gave an address to Congress, as quoted recently by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies:
“It ought to spell the end
