"...In the school auditorium, raw boned, clean shaven, scrawney-looking Captain Webb, with shy eyes and a hunch in his right shoulder, spoke up for lasting peace on earth.  He called for an international court that would adjudicate differences between nations, and prevent horrible wars like the one he had managed to survive..."*

March 18, 2003

2:22 am

                                                            As If

As if I really could do anything about it,

As if I really needed to watch more WAR TV,

As if I really had no time, this time, to read her

         Her bedtime story,

As if I really had to say, “Sweetie, I’m a teacher, so

         I really need to know about the war, so

         I can teach my students what they need to know.”

As if I really had the power to sober the drunken,

         Shame the greedy,

         Placate the wrathful,

         Humble the arrogant,

         Slay the green-eyed monsters,

         Inspire the slothful,

         Pet the lusting dogs of war, or

         Win the war of wild and whirling, wary, weary

         Words.

  “Sweetheart, you know I love you more

    Than anything in the world.”

 “Do you love me more than war?”

We marched up the silent stairs, in single file,

And read about that gluttonous Garfield.

I can’t say I read as if my life depended on it,

But it was almost

As if.

by Ron Smith

Faculty, The Webb School

Chronology: 

18 March, 2003 - Sadness, Anxiety, Hope

6 March, 2003 - Appeal to the U.N. Security Council
    Alums, students and faculty join the emergency petition to be compiled and delivered with letters to the 15 Security Council member states on Monday, March 10th.  The letter supports tough inspections for Iraq instead of war.

5 March, 2003 - Poetry Against the War
   Students and faculty gathered in the Woosley Plaza on the Webb campus to share poems, songs and comments as three of America’s preeminent living poets  presented approximately 15,000 anti-war poems to members of Congress in Washington DC.

3 March, 2003 - Lysistrata
    Students and faculty joined the world-wide theatrical reading of Lysistrata, Aristophanes' anti-war comedy, to protest the rush to war on Iraq.

27 February, 2003 - Rice for Peace
    Members of the Webb community joined this nationwide effort to send a  message to President Bush about Iraq:  If we are going to send something to Iraq it should be food, not bombs.

Perspectives:

Doctors Without Borders

International Red Cross

Amnesty International

* "...He knew his spirit had succumbed to audience skepticism:  'The people greeted me with guffaws and laughter.'  Both lawyers and judges ridiculed his proposal.  One old Justice explained to the hurt young man: ' When I decide a question, I have a sheriff and the other officers of the county to enforce my decree.  Now...in an international court where is your army to stand behind the decisions of the court?  They can't enforce their own decisions.'  It would be years before the sensitive young man (Sawney Webb) could be persuaded to give a speech in public again..."

(From "The Schoolmaker:  Sawney Webb and the Bell Buckle Story" by Laurence McMillin)

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