The Choice is Ours

The late master cellist, Pablo Casals, wrote an Oratorio based on the Nativity of Christ. He called it, simply, “The Manger.” When he was eighty-five, he embarked on a personal peace crusade. He said, “I decided to take the Oratorio anywhere in the world that I could and conduct it as a personal message of international understanding and peace. Since the message of this work was peace and the brotherhood of man, what better vehicle had I for acting at this urgent hour?” True to his word, and despite his advanced years, he gave performances of “The Manger” in North and South America, in England, France, Italy, Germany, Hungary, Israel, and a dozen other lands, “Everywhere,” he said, “people have demonstrated the same hunger for peace. Every performance has reaffirmed my conviction that it is not the peoples of the world but artificial barriers imposed by their governments that hold them apart.” -1

In a message to a 1967 International Peace Conference in Geneva, he…