Sure Road to World Peace: A Call for Peace

Sure Road to World Peace: A Call for Peace

At eighty-three Helen has had enough of world conflict and wars. In this essay she preaches about what she perceives as an attainable path to world peace. Born during the Civil War she has seen the devastation and misery caused by the world's great powers struggling for supremacy and domination of vast stretches of humanity. She has lived through two world wars and numerous smaller conflicts, but now, at the end of World War II, she sees a threat to humanity itself, atomic power. Helen calls for the establishment of two world confederations of peace, one composed of the women of the world and the other of everyone else. She produces testimonials from various influential people to support her cause. Finally, she plugs for her long dead husband, Confederate General James Longstreet, in her continuing effort to rehabilitate his tarnished reputation. Helen D. Longstreet, b. April 20, 1863, grew up on her father's plantation near Carnesville, Georgia. She attended schools in Gainesville and later worked on her father's newspaper. General James Longstreet, of Confederate fame, was her childhood hero. It was when she was working as an assistant state librarian and he was conducting research for his book, From Manassas to Appomattox at the state Archives that their romance blossomed. They were married on September 8, 1897 in the Governor's mansion in Atlanta, Ga. They spent several blissful years together attending Washington functions and traveling around the country. After Longstreet's death in 1904, she spent much of her time rehabilitating her husband's tarnished reputation. Among other things, she was a prolific writer, an avid environmentalist, a conservationalist, and, as an octogenarian, even ran for Governor in Georgia in 1950. She died May 3, 1962 at the ripe old age of 99.