Dear Norton
Genie and I will hold your daughter in the light, and daughters and sons in Iraq, Afganistan, England, and with God's help parents will stop sending their children into madness. I understand your being torn, and know none of us can know your uneasyness and concern. But, all of us will be welcomong people back, and someday, God will back forever. I was sitting in a railway station last Saturday, on my way to a meeting of the Peace Committee of the New York Yearly Meeting of the Society of Friends. A young fellow, late teens maybe, was bragging to a group of his friends, boys and girls, that he was going to go to war first then become a bounty hunter. He then began a story that he jumped over a fence and landed on in the middle breaking it appart with a delicate part of his anatomy.
I excused myself and told him that I had been a photgrapher in the occupied counties of Ireland during the seventies. I said, most people I know, including my self, who have seen war, and combat, well, it is a bit like jumping over the fence. It seems a better idea before you do it. It seems a good idea until you land. What ever happens you are not the same person after war.
But, you daughter has a godd and caring father, and whatever she sees or does, I know she will have a good moral shoulder to lean on. Let us not forget, it was not the young people who made peace in Viet Nam, or the Press, or marching people, it was the parents of this nation.
Peace in our day, speed the day, Larry