Since I look to history as a source of understanding, a large part of this book is concerned with the past.  History never repeats itself, but it offers wisdom to those who are willing to learn.  It teaches its lessons in the form of parables.  A parable is a story whose meaning is not obvious, illustrating by homely example and analogy some important moral principle.  Jesus taught in parables because he knew that people would remember his lessons better if they had to think out his meanings for themselves.  We still have much to learn from Jesus’ style of teaching.  When I look back into the past, I find in the two world wars the richest source of parables to help us to see where we are going.  That is why this book is filled with war stories.  The most important lessons come from World War I.  World War I, taken as a whole, is a gigantic parable of the war we are trying to avoid.  It was a war of peculiar ugliness, fought with exceptional stupidity and brutality.  It destroyed permanently a great part of European civilization.  It was started for reasons which in retrospect seem almost trivial.  The damage and loss suffered by all parties were utterly out of proportion to the pettiness of the initial quarrel between Serbia and Austria.  In these respects, the history of World War I holds up a mirror to us, showing us how small follies lead to great disasters, how ordinarily intelligent people walk open-eyed into hell.

The final paragraph of the first chapter, “Agenda for a Meeting of Minds,” of  Weapons and Hope, by Freeman Dyson, 1984.