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NO WALL LASTS FOREVER/!
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The Forces That
Work for Peace Have
Puilt a Strong Wall
at Conscience, Common Sense, Public Welfare,
to hold Back the Brutal Wars That Have Dis
graced History. Cynics Say That the Wall Will
Not Last, That War, Expressing Mens Brutal
Passion, Will Sweep Away Any Peace Wall and Bring Back the Old
Conditions When the Hour Comes. That May Be, That the Wall of Peace
May Have To Be Repaired a Thousand Times. But It Will Stand One Day,
and m a Day Still Later Men Will Even Forget Why It Was Ever Built.
S long as men fight like brutes,
every week should bring a re
minder of the necessity of
strengthening the peace move
ment.
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Very soon there is coming a great gathering
of the intelligent men of the world to fight
against the war spirit.
And this very week in Washington there wa s
a convention of scientists, discussing the only
real and useful war, the war against disease, and
denouncing also the war of men against men.
» M »
The picture on this page is a picture of the
future as .he cynic sees it.
Men who always judge the future by the
past, stand at the stern of the vessel studying
the wake instead of standing at the bow and
looking ahead, declare that war always will be,
BECAUSE WAR ALWAYS HAS BEEN.
If these men had lived a few centuries ago
they would have said that cannibalism always
would be, because cannibalism always has been.
And men that are now seventy or eighty
years of age remember very well when they
themselves said, “Slavery always will be, be
cause slavery always has been.”
But men have abandoned cannibalism, ex
cept in the most shameful and degraded quar
ters of the world. And men have abolished
slavery—at least the slavery of the body.
Just as surely as progress is the rule of life
on his planet, men in an early day will abolish
war—and it will be forever forgotten.
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This is not to say that declarations in favor
of peace, and Hague tribunals, and intellectual
and moral walls built up against warfare will
stand forever.
Men forget conscience in anger. Nations dis
grace themselves in the boasting and the excite
ment of warlike feeling.
The wall that has been built by patience,
earnest men and women, will perhaps, and
probe.oly, be swept away one day.
We shall have war again, of course. But
shame upon the nation, the statesmen, the citi
'ens, whose voice is for war, and against decent,
peaceful and just settlement.
A hole may be made in the fortifications of
peace. And brutality may spread over the land,
and hundreds of thousands die, and prosperity
be destroyed, and humanity set back a century.
But it will only be for a moment.
Walls are broken down, and they are re
paired.
And after awhile, THE WALL ITSELF IS
NO LONGER NEEDED, and men forget why it
was built.
* ♦ »
A huge wall surrounds the Empire of China.
It is broken down here and there, small vegeta
ble gardens are planted on top of it, houses are
built here and there along the crumbling sur
face. And the Chinese peasants wonder who
built it, why it was built. f
And those that make war against China now,
in mean and cowardly fashion, because she is
helpless, ignore the wall entirely.
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It stood against the Tartars for a while, then
the Tartars went through and took China, and
they rule there now, in the thinking minds of
China.
A wall of another kind until very lately sur
rounded the great city of Paris. It was built to
keep out the x enemy. And when the enemy ap
peared on the heights of St. Cloud, the wall was
a joke, for every cannon ball easily went over it,
above and beyond the famous “fortifications,”
and into the heart of the city.
That wall is removed now, the fortifications
are knocked down, the Frenchmen who remem
ber them scarcely know why they were built.
.« « e
The first step in this world against an evil of
any kind, whether it be in the individual striving
to conquer individual evil, in the nation fighting
against slavery, or in the whole of humanity
fighting against war, the steps are the same.
First, all effort at betterment seems hopeless.
The individual says, “I cannot change.” The
nation says, “I will not change.” And humanity
as a whole says, “SUCH CHANGE IS IMPOS
SIBLE.”
Then, that which seemed impossible seems
faintly possible. Then it seems probable. Then
the first steps toward reform are taken.
Then something is absolutely done, the tak
ing of a powerful resolution, the building of a
great wall, the gathering of congresses of the
nation—something is done to indicate that con
science is awake, and an effort at least is made.
Every step is taken painfully, slowly. Cyni-
oom ■
A4
cism mocks the good intention and then the
good effort.
Commonplace mental dullness says that
nothing will be done.
Something is done. Then the critics and the
fools say that it will not last.
And it does not last, BECAUSE THE RE
SULT IS ACHIEVED AND THE MONU
MENT, WALL OR LAW, IS NO LONGER
NECESSARY.
They had laws in France once forbidding
the peasants to eat the bodies of those that died
of the plague. They have that law no longer.
For men no longer die of the plague and, thanks
to the French Revolution, men are not so poor
as to eat the bodies of the dead.
They had a law in England which set the -
poor people aside in “hundreds,” and the hun
dred was held responsible for every crime com
mitted, from theft to murder. And theft and
murders were common in every hundred.
The hundred no longer exists, and it, is no
longer needed. And the gallows that dotted
every highwajr have disappeared. And the
stocks have gone and the ducking stools—and
all the other horrors that men said must always
be BECAUSE THEY ALWAYS HAD BEEN.
e # #
Men have now reached the stage at least of
building an intellectual wall of conscience, law
and international agreement to hold back the
horrors of war.
The wall may break, probably it will break.
But it will be rebuilt more strongly than
ever. And eventually it will crumble away and
be forgotten and not needed—and those that live
undei a real civilization will wonder at it, as we
wonder now at the ruins of the old Chinese wall.