ABSTRACT
This chapter traces experiences with war and peace in the twentieth century but come to no easy conclusions. Yet, if the twentieth century was the most violent of centuries—according to one estimate more than 100 million people lost their lives in war—it also witnessed the spread of ideas, practices, and institutions of nonviolence. The media made known worldwide the words and actions of individuals such as Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. The chapter describes the emphasis on "learning" echoes the words of Kenneth Boulding. The development of nuclear weapons and the tensions of the Cold War gave new urgency to the quest for alternatives to war as an instrument in international relations: The search for peaceful resolutions of conflict went on throughout the century even as wars raged. Such selective and contested public remembering of wartime actions have been common.
