He wants low prices with high wages and less work. It is
false arithmetic and its falsity will be proved by a tremendous crash.
Some crash must come, tragic and shocking to our social structure. I
see no escape from that, and only the hope that in that crisis the
very shock of it will restore the mental balance of the nation and
that all classes will combine under leaders of unselfish purpose, and
fine vision, eager for evolution and not revolution, for peace and not
for blood, for Christian charity and not for hatred, for civilization
and not for anarchy, to reshape the conditions of our social life and
give us a new working order, with more equality of labor and reward,
duty and sacrifice, liberty and discipline of the soul, combining the
virtue of patriotism with a generous spirit to other peoples across
the old frontiers of hate. That is the hope but not the certainty.
It is only by that hope that one may look back upon the war with
anything but despair. All the lives of those boys whom I saw go
marching up the roads of France and Flanders to the fields of death,
so splendid, so lovely in their youth, will have been laid down in
vain if by their sacrifice the world is not uplifted to some plane a
little higher than the barbarity which was let loose in Europe.
Pages:
951
952
953
954
955
956
957
958
959
960
961
962
963
964
965