Comparing two papers
For this paper I chose to compare and contrast two essays, where the authors seem to feel strong about the ethics behind war. One essay is written by William James “The Moral Equivalent to War” here the author explains his views about what was possibly WW I even though the author never mentions it directly. For my second essay I chose an Essay by Katherine Porter entitled “The Future Is Now” in this essay the Porter is facing the same moral dilemma as James, except that this essay takes place approximately 40 years later after WW II. She also fights wit the morality behind the war and explains her philosophy behind the issue at hand. In this essay James tries to find justifications for war in his own way. Although he is certainly not a proponent of war; he tries to look at war through the eyes of different figures such as generals to explain the rationale for war. In a way I can see why the people in his time feel the way they do about the war and I’ll explain that later in this summary, but it relates to what happened in the last war they saw prior to WW I which is when this essay was written. Lastly he tries to explain in a sense the hypocrisy of Americans during that time. First, James tries to look at war as a whole through the eyes of military figures, specifically General Lea. He tries to explain Lea’s theory on war which was that nations were meant to either expand or shrink. Lea believed that it was necessary for bigger and stronger nations to try to take over the smaller ones in order to maintain a certain type of balance in the world. Another figure he references to is S.R. Steinmetz who believed that war came from god and that through war countries could “employ all their powers at once and convergently.” Secondly, James throughout his essay was reacting to how the people were reacting to the war, and he also makes references to Germany and Japan who as we all know later go on to produce some of the worst wars that the world has seen.