The Exultant Spartan, ( Warrior No. 7)
An original acrylic painting - 16" X 20" , unframed
Tomorrow is Memorial Day, ( formerly known as Decoration Day ), when all across
our nation, patriotic Americans will use flowers and flags to decorate the graves of our
fallen men and women of the armed forces. Others will simply treat the holiday as an
opportunity to have a barbecue picnic, and begin the summer's festivities. It would be
nice to think that many of us will also pause to consider why it should be, that the
mourners of the fallen, will always have more, new graves to decorate, with the passing
of every year, and the passing of every decade, just as they have done through every
century, and every millennia gone by.
Historians through the ages, for more than twenty-five hundred years, have
documented the pivotal wars and battles which shaped our world, carefully detailing
the battle plans and listing the names of the commanders and the prominent soldiers
who led the battles. From the epic wars between the ancient Greeks and the Persian
Empire, and the territorial wars between the Greek city-states. to the Roman conquests
and their civil war, to the wars for Empire, fought between European monarchies, to the
world ravaging wars of the past couple of centuries: the historians have recorded their
names and all the death and destruction that they wrought upon each other, for us to
see and ponder today. Sadly, the only lengthy period without major warfare during
those centuries, was the Pax Romana, which was imposed on the entire Roman
Empire, by the iron fists of the armies.
So, what are the defects of the human character which makes us so easily drawn
into making war on our fellow man? We don't have the excuse of the Sacred Band
of the Spartans, who were taken from their families by age seven, to be trained as
warriors, under harsh and often brutal living conditions. For the Spartans, pillaging
and burning an enemy's city, was all in a day's work. The fault therefore is in ourselves,
which is revealed in our general lack of reasoning power, in the choices that we make.
We are too easily taken in by political frauds, who are quick to exploit our xenophobia
and our, racial and ethnic hatreds, in order to gain political power, to use for their own
benefit, rather than as a way to offer honest, public service to the people. It becomes
much too easy for us to blame all of our problems on people that we see as being
different from ourselves, but at the same time, it doesn't seem easy for us to recognize
the lies and deceptions of the warmongering demagogues. We tend to simply revert
to being tribal, mindless soldiers, rather than the kind of intelligent patriots who fight
to attain truth and justice for all.
Now, all around the world, we have these days of remembrance, to pay tribute
to those patriots who too often have had to defend their nations from the armies of
the kind of brutal tyrants and dictators that we read about in our history books,
and the same kind of dictators who still manage to gain power over much of the
world today. So, on our Memorial Day, as we decorate the graves of our fallen
heroes, the knowledge of human history makes us realize that a lasting peace can
never be achieved until we change, and become a more intelligent and thoughtful
human species. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem likely to happen any time soon.
There is an old song by Pete Seeger and Tom Petty, called,"Where have all
the flowers gone?", which caries on with that sad theme. The song's lyrics tell
us that the flowers have all gone to the graveyards of all of the young men who
went to war and died before their time. Then the song asks that age-old,
unanswerable question,"When will they ever learn?", and it gets no answer.
So I will repeat the question. When will we ever learn?
Eugene P. McNerney
P.S. The photo of the painting is very poor. I will try to get a more accurate image.
