On this Presidents Working day, let’s phase back in time for a minute to President George Washington’s last information to the country. It was 1796 when Washington gave his farewell tackle.
Washington experienced just one last request of the American persons, to “observe great religion and justice to all nations cultivate peace and harmony with all.”
Washington considered People in america desired to be kind, charitable to all peoples. Washington reported “to give to mankind the magnanimous and much too novel instance of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence.” Us residents experienced to established an example of this kindness as “just and amicable thoughts to all really should be cultivated.”
Likewise President Abraham Lincoln advocated peace at house and with all nations. As the American Civil War was nearing a near in 1865, Lincoln experienced his second inaugural tackle in which he stated, “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the suitable as God provides us to see the ideal permit us try on to complete the do the job we are in to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan — to do all which may possibly accomplish and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
“Peace among the ourselves” we will need now as there is way too significantly political bickering. We are unable to let political divides maintain us from having action on lifetime or loss of life concerns like gun regulate and local climate modify. We need to have to establish peace “with all nations” to end wars and protect against long run ones.
Lincoln’s words for peace motivated a group of farmers in 1948 to start a train that traveled across The usa, accumulating meals donations for Europe. This was just about three decades after Earth War II and Europeans have been starving. The Abraham Lincoln Friendship Teach served develop article war peace by feeding the hungry. You way too can get motion to feed the world’s hungry and add to planet peace.
You could assist the Earth Foods Software, Conserve the Young children, Catholic Aid Companies, Mary’s Foods, Church Globe Company, Mercy Corps, Action versus Starvation, Edesia, Care and a lot of some others by accumulating donations. The earthquake in Turkey and Syria, the drought in the Horn of Africa, wars in Ukraine, Yemen, D. R. Congo and South Sudan are amongst the a lot of emergencies ongoing that require meals aid. We will need to support the refugees from Ukraine as we continue to stand with that nation as it resists Russian aggression. We need to have additional Meals for Peace, which is the name of a world wide hunger aid plan started by President Dwight Eisenhower. Food items for Peace will save life from starvation close to the entire world.
President Eisenhower realized we wanted to be a potent country militarily but also be similarly strong in the pursuit of peace. Eisenhower claimed “we will stay powerful generally, but normally in one particular hand will be the olive department held out to all who will get it in honesty and in integrity.”
Eisenhower said in his farewell handle in 1961: “Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing essential. Collectively we must master how to compose variation, not with arms, but with intellect and respectable function.”
It pained Eisenhower that he could not announce a lasting peace in his remaining speech as President. Eisenhower stated: “Happily, I can say that war has been prevented. Constant development toward our final objective has been manufactured. But, so significantly stays to be carried out. As a non-public citizen, I shall by no means stop to do what tiny I can to support the planet progress together that highway.”
As citizens we far too can advocate for peace this sort of as letter composing contacting for disarmament treaties by the nuclear weapons states. As President Ronald Reagan once mentioned: “We seek the elimination one working day of nuclear weapons from the deal with of the Earth.”
On this Presidents Day, each individual of us can get action for peace at residence and overseas.
William Lambers is the writer of “The Highway to Peace” and partnered with the U.N. World Foodstuff Method on the e-book “Ending Entire world Starvation.” His writings have been posted by the New York Moments, Newsweek, History News Community, Chicago Sunshine-Moments and the Cleveland Basic Dealer.