For albumconcepts: Is It Any Wonder
“Sometimes
It's hard to know where I stand
It's hard to know where I am
Well maybe it's a puzzle I don't understand
But sometimes
I get the feeling that I'm
Stranded in the wrong time
Where love is just a lyric in a children's rhyme”
20 January 1913
History, I’ve found, often has a habit of repeating itself. Human beings continually make the same mistakes and though we have the ability learn from them, it seems we very rarely do. This afternoon I found myself walking through town with Nurse Redfern Joan when we shared a conversation of a very similar idea.
We were discussing war. Not the most pleasant of subjects, I shall admit, but nevertheless it was what we were discussing. Joan spoke of her displeasure with war, of her late husband, killed in the battle of Spion Kop and her resentment for the army since. She spoke of the schoolboys, being taught almost from day one how to fight and kill. Boys need discipline, I argued, that we need them to defend king and country. She responded very simply, challenging without anger. She claimed that discipline and defense were one thing, a very honourable thing, but that war was another.
This struck me. I have always thought that war was something we as human beings have needed, that it was fundamentally and essential part of life. Battles have always happened, and I had assumed they would continue to happen. How else was a country to protect its people and its honour? How else would young men come of age and prove themselves? War is a terrible, yet glorious thing. I have held this belief and stood by it for as long I am able to remember. No one has ever shown me reason to think differently.
Is war truly needed? Those long, terrible battles where blood, and mud, and sweat meet with the eternal sound of gunfire. Where young men die and others are left alone. What true reasons are there for such disaster? What singular reason exists that makes it worthwhile?
I admitted, though my thoughts were conflicted, that the human race did not need warfare and bloodshed, that there must be other ways to resolve differences and achieve glory. I do not know if that is where my opinions truly lie. I would like to think that perhaps there is another way, that perhaps the death and the pain that comes with war can be forever extinguished, if we were only to try a bit harder. Perhaps in another time, in another place, in a world like the Doctor’s where conflict can be stopped with a few clever words, there will be no wars. Perhaps young men won’t die. Perhaps love won’t be so hard to hold onto with no battles to destroy it, and wives left behind will never again lose their husbands.
Or perhaps, as it so often does, history will again repeat itself. Perhaps humanity will never learn to see war as anything other than glory. Perhaps it is a lesson we will never learn; perhaps it is one we are not supposed to learn. In that other time and place, the Doctor would never give war the title of glorious, but now, in the real and present world, I continue to wonder, can I?
Muse: John Smith
Fandom: Doctor Who
Word Count: 509
It's hard to know where I stand
It's hard to know where I am
Well maybe it's a puzzle I don't understand
But sometimes
I get the feeling that I'm
Stranded in the wrong time
Where love is just a lyric in a children's rhyme”
20 January 1913
History, I’ve found, often has a habit of repeating itself. Human beings continually make the same mistakes and though we have the ability learn from them, it seems we very rarely do. This afternoon I found myself walking through town with Nurse Redfern Joan when we shared a conversation of a very similar idea.
We were discussing war. Not the most pleasant of subjects, I shall admit, but nevertheless it was what we were discussing. Joan spoke of her displeasure with war, of her late husband, killed in the battle of Spion Kop and her resentment for the army since. She spoke of the schoolboys, being taught almost from day one how to fight and kill. Boys need discipline, I argued, that we need them to defend king and country. She responded very simply, challenging without anger. She claimed that discipline and defense were one thing, a very honourable thing, but that war was another.
This struck me. I have always thought that war was something we as human beings have needed, that it was fundamentally and essential part of life. Battles have always happened, and I had assumed they would continue to happen. How else was a country to protect its people and its honour? How else would young men come of age and prove themselves? War is a terrible, yet glorious thing. I have held this belief and stood by it for as long I am able to remember. No one has ever shown me reason to think differently.
Is war truly needed? Those long, terrible battles where blood, and mud, and sweat meet with the eternal sound of gunfire. Where young men die and others are left alone. What true reasons are there for such disaster? What singular reason exists that makes it worthwhile?
I admitted, though my thoughts were conflicted, that the human race did not need warfare and bloodshed, that there must be other ways to resolve differences and achieve glory. I do not know if that is where my opinions truly lie. I would like to think that perhaps there is another way, that perhaps the death and the pain that comes with war can be forever extinguished, if we were only to try a bit harder. Perhaps in another time, in another place, in a world like the Doctor’s where conflict can be stopped with a few clever words, there will be no wars. Perhaps young men won’t die. Perhaps love won’t be so hard to hold onto with no battles to destroy it, and wives left behind will never again lose their husbands.
Or perhaps, as it so often does, history will again repeat itself. Perhaps humanity will never learn to see war as anything other than glory. Perhaps it is a lesson we will never learn; perhaps it is one we are not supposed to learn. In that other time and place, the Doctor would never give war the title of glorious, but now, in the real and present world, I continue to wonder, can I?
Muse: John Smith
Fandom: Doctor Who
Word Count: 509