A chance for peace - it was good enough for Eisenhower

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. - Dwight D Eisenhower.

Those were the words I held up today in the rain to honour Armistice Day - when 'the war to end all wars' ended. Most people probably wondered what on earth we were on about. Hard to believe these words were spoken by an American President at the height of the Cold War, who had been WWII general.

He spoke them after the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953, when he felt there was an opportunity to nip the Cold War in the bud. It prompted him to give a speech that would be titled “The Chance for Peace”, against the counsel of then Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

The speech went onto say: "Now, there could be another road before us—the road of disarmament. What does this mean? It means for everybody in the world: bread, butter, clothes, homes, hospitals, schools—all the good and necessary things for decent living."

Similar could be said today of climate change and our addiction to carbon. Whether we see it or not, there is another road that lies before us.

Read more about the context from Robert Schlesinger.