Just about anyone is capable of anything. Our ethical values, which we tend to think as being solid and incorruptible, corrode in intemperate moral climates such as Rawanda and Bosnia more quickly than can be believed. We cannot continue to sit on the sidelines in anticipation that the problems will solve ithemselves. Can we offer no protection against the desperate ways men devise to harm and kill their fellow men?

From a very early age one accepts, believes, or is told that certain things exist in a certain manner. That society is based on order, on reason, on justice. And that whenever anything goes wrong, one can appeal to the innate decency, or common sense, or a notion of legality in people to rectify error or offer redress. Then suddenly you discover that what you accepted as premises and basic conditions, simply does not exist. Where you expected something solid there turns out to be nothing. Everything you've taken for granted, with so much certainty that you never questioned it, turns out to be an illusion. Certainties and beliefs become lies. I'll never stop believing in justice. In a Century that has seen Hitler, Stalin, Biafra, Vietnam, Pol Pot Bangladesh, Rawanda, etc., what does life truly mean? It doesn't mean much does it.

By doing nothing, by waiting for a more opportune moment to intervene, more people go on dying. Indifference is the greatest sin of all. I believe we have to trade our concern for self, for wealth and security for an equally intense desire to fight whatever is evil and to do whatever is necessary to bring the situation under control. You write of the UN. Power has a way of becoming an end in itself. In such a bureaucracy nothing gets done until it is too late or virtually too late. If it is actually too late, then obviously nothing should be done and the bureaucracy sighs its collective relief and returns to its beloved routine. When you decide the fate of others, you need a very active conscience to start acting against your own interests and it would seem to me that conscience does not stand up very well to much heat or cold. I suppose it is madness to hope that things will change. There seems to be two kinds of madness that we should guard against. One is the belief that we can do everything and the other is the belief we can do nothing. In the past, our forefathers were willing to risk their personal security and future for what they believed in. Now we have the problem of apathy. The apathy of nations and Governments. The apathy of ourselves. We cannot continue to remain indifferent to what is happening. Tomorrow is as important as today for it hopes we have learned something from yesterday.