Insight on the News

“Urgent Hunger for Peace”

Pollster Louis Harris cannot recall in his more than thirty years of conducting opinion polls when he has seen more of an “urgent hunger for peace” than now, according to a recent interview in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. In his latest findings on public attitude toward the threat of nuclear war he states: “Perhaps the most striking number in all the research we’ve done on the subject is that by 74 to 22 percent, a big majority of the American people, say that they want all countries that have nuclear weapons to destroy them.” He attributes this mainly to “a growing distrust of the rulers of the two superpowers.” And he describes these findings as “an incredible phenomenon . . . an idea that will not go away.”

The European Nuclear Disarmament movement is sweeping Europe with similar effect, involving all types of people including professionals. For instance, 160 scientists and scholars from 37 countries attended the Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs in Poland during August. A call for a nuclear weapons freeze by 97 Nobel laureates was unanimously adopted by the conference and its final statement cautioned: “The menace of nuclear war has increased.”

Mankind’s hunger for peace can only be satisfied by God himself when he makes “wars to cease to the extremity of the earth” through his heavenly Kingdom. Then “the righteous one will sprout, and the abundance of peace until the moon is no more” will become a global reality.​—Psalm 46:9; 72:7.

UN Ignored

The past year has witnessed an unusual increase in armed conflicts and world tension. Has the United Nations lived up to its charter as an instrument of peace and relieved this strain? No​—and neither are nations giving heed to its advice, according to the UN’s new secretary-general, Javier Pérez de Cuéllar. “The United Nations itself has been unable to play as effective and decisive a role as the Charter certainly envisaged for it,” he said in his blunt report on “The Work of the Organization.” One of the main reasons why the UN has failed to keep peace and to serve as a forum for negotiations is the ineffectiveness of its primary organ for the maintenance of international peace and security, the Security Council. The Council finds that “its resolutions are increasingly defied or ignored,” laments Mr. Pérez de Cuéllar. This prompted the secretary-general to say: “We sometimes appear still to be in the grip of the dead hand of a less fortunate past.” As the world sinks deeper toward disaster, what is needed is a sure hand to pull honest-hearted people to safety. Where can such a hand be found? Certainly not among human institutions! The psalmist David trusted God and said: “Your right hand will save me,” and the prophet Isaiah wrote: “Look! The hand of Jehovah has not become too short that it cannot save.”​—Psalm 138:7; Isaiah 59:1.

Herpes​—The “Bug” That Will Not Go Away

Participants in the sexual revolution are paying a high price for their promiscuous pleasure​—genital herpes. This viral infection, with symptoms that include fluid-filled blisters in the genital area, is generally, though not always, transmitted by sexual contact and there is no known cure. The disease now infects an estimated twenty million Americans. A Time magazine cover story calls this sexual scourge “the new Scarlet Letter” and centers on the reason for its surge: “Not only are more people indulging in [promiscuous] sex, they are also more active​—starting younger, marrying later, divorcing more often.”

However, more and more of the “sexually liberated” are questioning the value of casual “sex,” according to New York Group Therapist Dominick Riccio. He says: “They’re disillusioned with free sex and terrified of getting herpes and having it forever.” One prominent advocate of “free sex” says: “It may be there is a god in heaven carving out his pound of flesh for all our joys.” The sexually loose are indeed “receiving in themselves the full recompense, which was due for their error.” (Romans 1:27) This, of course, does not apply to clean-living persons who contract the disease from sources other than sexual contact.