A Perspective on Man and a Century
By James A. Langley
[Dr. James A. Langley is former Executive Director of the District of Columbia Baptist Convention.]
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I Humankind by reason lifted Throwing all, dreamers had gambled And usher in a brave new day They knew not the greatness of man Prospects had never seemed more bright II Instead the new age would witness Devastating successive wars The depth of the abyss came not Blind hatred of others by birth, III Infamous names! Hitler, Stalin, The long, dark annals of man show Down with tyrants!Up with freedom! Valor will we long remember Stalingrad, Alamein, Midway, In the Great War`s train came the rise– Since Bolsheviks seized the Tower, IV Titanic`s voyage, glorious Yet here too heroism would shine The dustbowl, earthquakes, storms and floods The Great Depression wrenched masses Assassinations–Ferdinand`s,[iv] V With science`s sev`n-league boots, time-space Scientists thro` fusion and fission Sputnik gallvanized the space race, Computers` modest beginnings Linked to the world by web world wide,
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VI "Greatest woman since Joan of Arc," How indebted humanity And much more; Einstein`s formulas The Wrights` machines, Lindbergh flying Gandhi richly earned the title[vii] Fermi`s mind, the gift of Anne Frank, Hemingway`s skill with a story, Courageous Mandela and King, Nixon who resigned as Pres`dent, Wilson, Franklin Roos`velt, loom tall, VII Era images still remain–[ix] Darker images sear from far- Children`s bloated bellies, spindly limbs, `Stars-stripes` on Iwo Jima raised, VIII Simpson case, pros`cutorial, Brown-Board wrought justice long deferred; IX Billy Graham preached to large throngs, Religion`s Grand Inquisitors Rome`s Vatican Two gave promise X Garlands many to wide acclaim, Nurmi,[xiii] Nicklaus, define merit, Nolan Ryan`s pitching prowess, XI Movie fame has gone with the wind: Films, television, internet XII Symbols of hope, faith and courage Amundsen first at the South Pole, Lend-lease aid and the Marshall Plan, Women`s and civil rights at last XIII If it was `the American The mind of man so rich in gifts If man would conquer his heart`s flaw, |
Endnotes
[i] The British alone suffered 60,000 casualties (killed and wounded) on the first day of the Battle of the Somme "without gaining a single yard." (William Manchester, The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill–Alone, 1932-1940, 47)
[ii] The finale of Wagner`s magnum opus, The Ring of the Nibelung, of which the central motif is the mythical figure Wotan`s love of power. Hitler, as William L. Shirer noted in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (p. 101), "worshiped Wagner". He was a close friend of the Wagner family and frequented performances of Wagner at Beyreuth. Gotterdammerung (Twilight of the Gods), the last opera Hitler ever attended, which he saw shortly after the fall of France (Robert Payne, The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler, 351), climaxes with Valhalla—the castle built to consolidate Wotan s rule–crashing in flames and total catastrophe. Shirer adds: "It is not at all surprising that Hitler tried to emulate Wotan when in 1945 he willed the destruction of Germany so that it might go down in flames with him" (Op. cit., 102).
[iii] In World War II in the North Atlantic, four chaplains (Protestant, Catholic and Jewish) aboard the torpedoed troopship USS Dorchester (February 3, 1943) gave their life jackets to servicemen who had none, and went down with the ship, survivors said, with their arms linked and heads bowed in prayer.
[iv] The assassination of Austrian crown prince Archduke Ferdinand (and his wife Countess Sophie) in Sarajevo, June 28, 1914, was the immediate and ostensible cause of World War I.
[v] Joel Achenbach (The Washington Post, March 12, 1999) referred to the late 20th century as "The Too-Much-Information Age"–commenting that "today`s data glut jams libraries and lives, but is anyone getting any wiser?" Librarian of Congress, James Billington, calls it "the Tower of Babel syndrome."
[vi] Marie Curie and her husband Pierre Curie jointly discovered polonium and radium in 1898. Pierre was killed in a street accident in 1906; Mme. Curie continued her scientific work well into the 20th century, and was the first person to be awarded two Nobel Prizes (in Physics–shared with her husband and A.H. Becqueral, 1903, and in Chemistry, 1911). The Curies refused to patent their processes or otherwise profit from the commercial exploitation of radium.
[vii]Mahatma means `great soul`. Indian spiritual and political leader, Gandhi was the catalyst for his nation`s independence from British rule. His insistence on non-violence powerfully influenced the Civil Rights Movement in America. Eschewing material possessions, he strove to improve the lot of the poor, and for the abolition of untouchability–the lowest caste.
[viii] The decades of labors for women`s rights in the 19th century by Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902) and Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906) finally led to the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (1920), guaranteeing women`s suffrage.
[ix] During World War II some 4,250 Polish officers were executed in a forest near the Russian village of Katyn. Though the Soviets tried to blame the Germans for the atrocity, in 1989 Soviet scholars revealed that Stalin had ordered the massacre.
[x] Babi Yar, a ravine near Kiev, where Nazis machine-gunned about 35,000 Jews on September 29-30, 1941, by 1943 had become a mass grave for more than 100,000 persons, mostly Jews.
[xi] Swedish diplomat and businessman assigned to Sweden`s legation in Budapest, Wallenberg helped save approximately 100,000 Jews from the Holocaust. He issued Swedish passports to some 20,000 Jews, and sheltered others in places he bought or rented. Wallenberg survived a Nazi attempt on his life, but in 1945 the Soviets imprisoned him, possibly because of work he was doing for the U.S. secret service. In 1957 the Soviet government announced that he had died of a heart attack in a Moscow prison in 1947, though he was reported seen at later dates. (Columbia Encyclopedia, Fifth Edition)
[xii] African-American Jesse Owens upset Nazi Aryan racial theories in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, breaking two world track records, equaling another, and shared in winning a relay race, as Hitler looked on but left before medal presentations.
[xiii] Paavo Nurmi, Finnish track star, set 20 world running records, and won nine Olympic gold medals and three gold medals in team events between 1920 and 1932.
[xiv] Astronaut Neil Armstrong was the first man on the moon. American Lance Armstrong battled back over cancer to win the grueling Tour de France in 1999.
[xv] Nolan Ryan holds major league baseball`s all-time strikeout record–5,714. Cal Ripken, Jr. played in 2,632 consecutive games (Lou Gehrig had held the record at 2,130), and is the only short-stop in major league history to have more than 2,800 hits, 350 home runs and 1,500 RBI. Mark McGwire`s 70 home runs is the single season record, and his 180 homers in three consecutive seasons is the best in history. Henry (Hank) Aaron holds the career record for homers at 755 (eclipsing Ruth`s 714), for RBI–2,297, and total bases-6,856.
[xvi] The tragic crushing by Chinese army forces of pro-democracy demonstrations in April, 1989, in Beijing`s Tiananmen Square, and the killing of hundreds of students, highlights the regimc`s determination to prevent the rise of political freedom, but also the extraordinary courage of the demonstrators, exemplified in particular by a lone unarmed man standing down a column of tanks, an image sent round the world.
[xvii] A phrase coined by Henry Luce, head of Time, Inc., in a famously triumphalist editorial in Life magazine.
