Among the “must see” sites that we visited in France last month was the Palace of Versailles. Over-the-top in its size and opulence, it was, frankly, kind of ridiculous, and even depressing. As I wrote earlier, seeing it made the mob that dragged away the king and queen in 1789 completely understandable.

The most dramatic of the palace’s countless rooms is the Hall of Mirrors. It was a reception room designed intentionally to intimidate anyone there for an audience with the king. After the revolution, in addition to being a museum, the Palace and the Hall have been used for various public and state occasions. The banquet for last week’s G7 meeting was held there, for example.

Most famously, the Hall was the site in 1919 for the signing of what became known as the Versailles Treaty. When we were there, I was puzzled to find no mention of what was one of the most important events in modern European history. Our guide said the table used for it was off in another room, but we got lost and never found it. Then, last week, I think I got the explanation for the silence.

I found on YouTube a recently re-released BBC documentary on World War I. The seventh and last part was about the aftermath of the war. One historian after another gave scathing judgements of the treaty officially ending the conflict. Their verdict was that none of the primary negotiators understood how much the world had changed due to the war. This new world faced enormous challenges but rather than meeting them, the treaty only exacerbated them. No wonder there was no mention at Versailles of the treaty that bore its name. The less said, the better.

The documentary, titled simply “The Great War” and narrated by Judy Dench, focuses less on the history of battles, generals, and politicians and more on the war’s effects on ordinary people, especially soldiers and their families back home, and the civilians caught in the fighting and impacted by the war’s devastation.

The physical destruction and financial losses were unprecedented. An appalling 20 million died in the conflict, split about evenly between soldiers and civilians. About the same number were injured/wounded or went missing. Countless more died of hunger and disease after the fighting ended. National debts would take decades to pay off.

Of course, those who began the war had entirely different expectations. They planned for victory on the battlefield, naturally, but also new opportunities to expand their borders and their economies. No one expected the cataclysm that followed. Well, no one in authority, anyway. And the victors who signed the treaty at Versailles thought they had just fought “the war to end all wars.” Their era of peace lasted just twenty years.

As I continue to read history, the more saddened I become realizing how “normal” warfare has been through the ages, and the enormous toll it has taken. I just learned, for example, about pitched battles the Romans fought over a period of centuries in southern France with tribes from the north. I had no idea they fielded such large armies back then. Casualties were in the hundreds of thousands. Today, there is no sign of those battles, or their victims.

War and its suffering are the stuff of ancient literature, including the Bible. The Iliad and the Odyssey, epic poems centered on the Trojan War and its aftermath, are over 4,500 years old. While warfare seemed to be a constant of the ancient world, there was expectation that the rise of Christianity would temper that. And there was some restraint for a while.

It wasn’t long, however, before Christians were fighting non-Christians (e.g. the Crusades) and each other just as savagely as before. The Reformation (1517) sparked nearly a century-and-a-half of savage warfare, culminating in the Thirty Years’ War which caused up to 8 million deaths, mostly civilians. The Peace of Westphalia (1648) finally diffused religious tensions, only to begin the growth of conflicts between nation-states, which we are still dealing with today.

In Gone with the Wind, when Scarlett’s family, scraping to survive in the ruins of their plantation, learns that Lee has surrendered and the war is over, one of her sisters cries out, “Why did we ever fight?” Scarlett, on the other hand, gets a gleam in her eye and says to herself, “The price of cotton will go sky high! We’ll plant more cotton.” In pre-modern times, warfare was typically for the personal glory of rulers and generals, or an expression of religious fanaticism. In modern times, however, war has increasingly been about money.

After the Great War’s enormous cost with such little benefit, cynicism and despair gripped much of Europe, but such feelings crossed the Atlantic as well. One of the most bitter takes on that war, and modern warfare generally, was a speech turned into a small book (1935) by a retired decorated Marine Corps major general, Smedley Butler, titled War Is a Racket.

War is a racket…. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small “inside” group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.

Smedley spoke from personal experience. Before the US entered World War I, he participated in multiple foreign miliary operations that got little attention at the time.

I helped make Mexico … safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street…. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.

Historians have found documentary evidence showing how arms manufacturers and related industries promoted the miliary buildup prior to World War 1. Furthermore, many such businesses, on both sides of the conflict, profited handsomely from it afterwards, while many other businesses were ruined. And the same was true for the Second World War. Many of those businesses, or their descendants, are still going concerns, with their names found on popular products.

As he was leaving office, President Dwight Eisenhower gave perhaps his most famous speech, coining a phrase still used decades later.

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

In another speech as he began his presidency, having witnessed the costs of total war firsthand, in his new civilian leadership role Eisenhower was able to speak plainly about what those costs truly meant.

“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 are not clothed.”

But that thievery has only continued and grown, for Eisenhower was trying to close the door long after the horses had run out. Today, our bipartisan cynicism knows no bounds when it comes to the scamming and fleecing by that “military-industrial complex.” Pentagon budgets always grow, are never turned down, and even have unrequested projects added which benefit congressional constituents and donors. Right now, contractors with ties to the current war with Iran has seen their stock prices skyrocket.

While not on the scale of last century’s world wars, wars are nonetheless still being fought around the globe. Every year, thousand are killed or injured, military and civilian, billions are spent to enable those wars, and billions are lost in the destruction they cause. Almost every one slowly grinds to a halt in a stalemate, achieving little if any of what was promised by those who instigated it, and then is quickly forgotten when a new conflict flares up somewhere else.

Unfortunately, I don’t now of any political or other strategic solution to this sorry situation (and I apologize if you’ve read this far expecting one). And I’m not really sure one exists. But I do believe that in a real sense, this war-making world exists within each one of us. That these conflicts have their roots in the ongoing conflicts within ourselves. And that we won’t take seriously the world’s battles until we can look honestly at the struggles going on inside us.

Caitlin Johnstone, the Australian commentator I mentioned just recently, wrote a blog post this week about how her in-your-face reporting meshes with her spirituality. For her, they are inseparable, because honesty in one instance has to be matched by honesty in the other.

The overwhelming majority of what people call “spirituality” in our society is really just glorified escapism. It’s about avoiding reality by focusing on good vibes, nice feelings, and comforting stories about the nature of the cosmos….

And this happens to align nicely with the whole of mainstream culture under the western empire; our entire civilization is built upon psychological compartmentalization and avoidance of uncomfortable truths….

Authentic spirituality moves in the exact opposite direction to all this. While false spirituality is about turning away and avoiding, true spirituality is about turning towards and facing. Turning and facing all the uncomfortable realities about yourself, your internal dynamics, your trauma, your maladaptive coping mechanisms, your belief systems, your interpersonal relationships, your community, your society, your nation, and your world.

Soon, the country will engage in much flag waving and band playing to celebrate its 250^th anniversary. There’s nothing wrong with that. Enjoy the fun. But with age, they say, comes maturity, and I would say, a new measure of honesty. As a nation, we’re lagging in both those departments—and there are elements who want it that way.

To remedy that, we need to take our spiritual maturity to a new level. We need to take our own personal spiritual maturity seriously, not to meet some earthly or heavenly requirement. But rather because that is the only way we can come to the truth, the truth, Jesus says in John, which will make us truly free. And we will not experience peace on earth until we know the peace in our hearts which Paul says surpasses all understanding.

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