One By One

War happens to people, one by one.  That is really all I have to say and it seems to me I have been saying it forever.  Unless they are immediate victims, the majority of mankind behaves as if war was an act of God which could not be prevented; or they behave as if war elsewhere was none of their business.  It would be a bitter cosmic joke if we destroy ourselves due to atrophy of the imagination.

-- Martha Ellis Gellhorn (1908 - 1998), American war correspondent and novelist.  She covered nearly every war during the twentieth century.  Letter as quoted in "Gellhorn: A Twentieth Century Life" (2003) written by Caroline Moorehead