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This page updated 2007.07.17
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The Twilight Zone episode "No Time Like the Past" featured an eloquent, compelling dialog set in the fictitious town of Homeville, Indiana on July 1, 1881 between Paul Driscoll, a time traveler from 1963 played by Dana Andrews, and Mr. Hanford, a banker who expounded at length how the United States must make its mark on the world through military might. I transcribed the speech by Driscoll to preserve it for others to read in light of current world events, to consider the horrors of war.
Full credit goes to the writers of the show, in this case one Rod Serling, who was a brilliant man. He also served in the U.S. Marine Corps.
Paul Driscoll's pacifist speech:
I take offense at armchair warriors who don't know what a shrapnel wound feels like, or what death smells like after 3 days in the Sun, or the look in a man's eyes when he realizes that he's minus a leg and his blood is seeping out.
You have an enthusiasm for planting the flag deep, but you don't have a nodding acquaintance with what it's like to bury men in the same soil.
You'll not sit there and take talk like this. No, no! You'll go back to your bank where it'll be business as usual until the next dinner time, when you'll give us another of your vacuous speeches about a country growing strong by filling its graveyards. Well, you're in for some gratifying times, Mr. Hanford, you can believe me. There'll be a lot of graveyards for you to fill. In Cuba, and in France, and all over Europe and all over the Pacific. And you can sit on the sidelines and wave your pennants because, according to your definition, this country's going to get virile as the Devil. From San Juan to Inchon we'll show how red our blood is because we'll spill it.
There are two unfortunate aspects of this: one is that you won't have to spill any. The other is that you won't live long enough to know that I'm right.
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