For after the Battle comes quiet.

Today the guns are silent. A great tragedy has ended. A great victory has been won. The skies no longer rain with death — the seas bear only commerce — men everywhere walk upright in the sunlight. The entire world lies quietly at peace. The holy mission has been completed. And in reporting this to you, the people, I speak for the thousands of silent lips, forever stilled among the jungles and the beaches and in the deep waters of the Pacific which marked the way.

Today the guns are silent. A great tragedy has ended. A great victory has been won...
A new era is upon us. Even the lesson of victory itself brings with it profound concern, both for our future security and the survival of civilization. The destructiveness of the war potential, through progressive advances in scientific discovery, has in fact now reached a point which revises the traditional concepts of war.
Men since the beginning of time have sought peace... Military alliances, balances of power, leagues of nations, all in turn have failed, leaving the only path to be by way of the crucible of war. We have had our last chance. If we do not now devise some greater and more equitable system, Armageddon will be at our door. The problem basically is theological and involves a spiritual recrudescence and improvement of human character that will synchronize with our matchless advances in science, art, literature and all material and cultural developments of the past two thousand years. It must be of the spirit if we are to save the flesh.

No war, or battle's sound
Was heard the world around.
The idle spear and shield were high up hung.

All the banners stop waving And the flags stop flying And the silence comes over Thousands of soldiers...

In the best possible future, there will be no war, no famine, no crime, no sickness, no oppression, no fear, no limits, no shame… …and nothing to do.

All silence is. All emptiness. And now: The dawn.

Once again it was quiet, too quiet after what had happened. ("The End")

Today, there is nothing. There are no coaches, no competitions, nothing at all. It's radio silence

Neither dust nor light stirred. It was as if time had been bled dry and given up.

Guns have their own silence. It is the silence of the dead to come.

No one, it appeared to Barney, had anything to do now; the weight of empty time hung over them all.

All quiet along the Potomac to-night, No sound save the rush of the river,
While soft falls the dew on the face of the dead— The picket ’s off duty forever.

..when a war ends, what does that look like exactly?
do the cells in the body stop detonating themselves?
does the orphanage stop screaming for its mother?
when the sand in the desert has been melted down to glass
and our reflection is not something we can stand to look at
does the white flag make for a perfect blindfold?
yesterday i was told a story
about this little girl in Iraq, six-years-old,
who cannot fall asleep
because when she does
she dreams of nothing
but the day she watched her dog
eat her neighbor's corpse.
if you told her war is over
do you think she can sleep?