OrilliaMatters welcomes letters to the editor at [email protected]. Please include your daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication). The following letter is in response to a letter titled, 'No room for negotiation between Russia, Ukraine,' published March 28, 2003.
A month or so ago, you published a letter of mine, advocating that for everyone’s sake the disagreement between the Ukraine and Russia be transferred as swiftly as possible from the battlefield to the conference table.
In reply, Eugence Cholkan responded with a letter, citing the example of Hitler’s aggression as evidence of the need for continued warfare.
I apologize for the delay in replying: I was struck down first by COVID and then a subsequent opportunistic infection.
The Hitler argument, however, is unconvincing. As early as 1919, long before he rose to power, the Second International Congress of Women for Peace and Freedom meeting in Zurich stated that the terms of the Paris Peace Treaty were so harsh and vindictive that they would inevitably lead to further war. This proved to be the case; they led to precisely those conditions in Germany that enabled the rise of Hitler and the Nazis, and to the Second World War.
What was needed then was less macho posturing and more humane common sense. The same is true now.
Margaret Clare-Ford
Orillia
