World War I: War Is A Waste Of Good Lives

War is a waste of good lives, which are more precious than any gift on the planet. Life is so fragile and cannot be altered, stopped, or reversed with any amount of money, power, or land. Therefore, we should not risk young men’s lives by throwing them into a war zones telling them to shoot at people not wearing the same color as you. War causes many innocent people die just because they were “in the way” and causes many others to become murders in order to serve their country. War overall is an extremely barbaric act and is frankly a waste of good lives. War is malicious doing that causes many unarmed civilians to to die. In World War I, almost 9,000,000 civilians were killed and for what? Their deaths served no purpose in aiding the war effort on either side. These civilians died from diseases, because almost all of their nation’s medicine and medical personnel were helping in the war effort, from massacres, caused by militaries destroying entire cities filled with people, and from starvation, due to practically all the nation’s food being channeled to
the army to feed the troops. The civilians did not choose to put themselves in any of those scenarios, but rather they were caught in the unavoidable web of death spun by war. In the end of the war, the 9,000,000 civilians who died made little difference in the outcome which makes all of their deaths in vain. War causes people to kill others whom they have no quarrel with and therefore have no purpose to even threaten. In All Quiet on the Western Front, a German officer remarked, “‘How could you be my enemy? If we threw away these rifles and this uniform, we could be brothers.’” The German soldier at this point has just stabbed a French soldier and is questioning his actions. Now the German soldier has to live with the the pain and emotional suffering that is caused from his actions. He now realized that he had no disagreement with the French soldier and if you take away what divides them they are the same. This is also true for many others who are killing men in no man’s land who they don’t even know and are only fighting because they are wearing different uniforms. These men are fighting and being killed for no purpose, for they have no conflict between each other. Therefore, all lives killed were purposeless slaughter of innocent men just trying to serve their country . War should be limited so that it does not get to the point of wastefulness.
In World War I, war casualties reached about 30,000,000 and many of those killed were not directly involved in the war. However, it is not just World War I where many who are killed are bystanders. In most wars, many of the killed populous are civilians who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. DuFu said “There should be a limit to the killing of men. Every country should have its bounds. It is enough to keep the aggressors away; no sense in killing and wounding so many.” He is saying that people should stick to the original ideals of war and only eliminate those who oppose us rather than destroying anyone who is relatively in our path. This should create the same results of the war and cut the death rate in half, allowing those not directly involved in war to live in peace and it makes the most of everyone’s
lives. Killing should only be in self defense, for life is so valuable. Rupert Brooke said “... dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold.” Through past warfare and in nowadays time we see this. In war, we see the death total rise into the millions and for World War I it didn’t accomplish anything. It required another World War with even more casualties to fix the conflict, so there went 30,000,000 lives wasted. In nowadays times, lives change in an instant and each person to us must hold a special place in our heart because one never knows how long you left with that person. When the land, power, or wealth fought over in a war is compared to the lives lost in the war is clear to see that whatever was fought over was not worth it and that the lives lost were squandered. When one looks at the staggering number of casualties one seems to wonder if war is a necessary occurrence. Looking at the many wars throughout history is clear to see that the superficial items fought over in most wars were honestly not worth the lives lost. Wars cause so many people to suffer and die and many families to be torn apart. War is really not a necessary occurrence and is just a waste of good lives