Beasley’s Farm and
Home Weekly, Charlotte, N.C., July 31,
1941.
First of All, Destroy
the Mad Dog…Then the World Must Find a Way to Live in Peace and Goodwill
We are told that chemists, knowing the results of action and
reaction of substances, can tell in advance when and how a new substance may be
discovered or produced. This may require time and patience to make the
discovery, but it is known to be within the field of possibility.
There is something like this in human society. Students may
guess or even be assured that certain things must take place. The time maybe
far from “ripe” for them and educational processes are long and difficult. The
inertia of custom, the opposition of self interest, the inability of the masses
and the classes to comprehend the necessities, all tie up to make a lag which
makes it difficult for development of much that is admittedly desirable and
necessary.
It was thus with Woodrow Wilson and the League of Nations.
The time was not ripe. Men could see the purpose and the need, but few of them
could see that something of the kind must come before the world could have
peace. The future effects of the World War were reckoned as similar to the
effects of other wars. But they could not be for the world had changed. At the
peace council Wilson visioned it, but Loyd George and Clemenceau did not. None
foresaw that the conquerers would relax in a moral slump and that the
vanquished would immediately start a quest for revenge.
But Wilson, bringing home a scant victory over Loyd George
and Clemenceau, met defeat in his own country from the same elements that are
now estimating war and worldwide influences in the terms of war with powder and
ball and world commerce as when carried in sailing ships. But Wilson saw the
great truth—the constant and increasing integration of the world in which old
things had passed away and new methods must be devised for new conditions. To
him the League of Nations was to be a supervising agency through which all
nations, coming into court with clean hands must receive justice, and with
reason, tolerance and cooperation established, wars might become obsolete.
But once more the old methods must be depended upon, and now
what have we? Another world war more cruel, more unnecessary and more far
reaching than the first. So Wilson’s idea, the stone rejected by the builders,
may yet become the corner stone of a new edifice of world peace and justice. And now reasonable men are talking of what must come after this war is over,
and that is the enthronement of the principles of Wilson. This idea was
concisely set forth by Assistant Secretary of State Sumner Wells, the other day
for the consideration of the world. His utterances were in part as follows:
“I feel it is not premature for me to suggest that the free
governments of peace-loving nations everywhere should even now be considering
and discussing the way in which they can best prepare for the better day which
must come, when the present contest is ended in the victory of the forces of
liberty and of human freedom, and in the crushing defeat of those who are
sacrificing mankind to their own lust for power and for loot.
“At the end of the last war, a great President of the United
States gave his life in the struggle to further the realization of the splendid
vision which he had held to the eyes of suffering humanity—the vision of an
ordered world governed by law.
“The League of Nations, as he conceived it, failed in part
because of the blind selfishness of men here in the United States, as well as
in other parts of the world; it failed because of its utilization by certain
powers primarily to advance their own political and commercial ambitions; but
it failed chiefly because of the fact that it was forced to operate, by those
who dominated its councils, as a means of maintaining the status quo. It was
never enabled to operate as its chief spokesman had intended, as an elastic and
impartial instrument in bringing about peaceful and equitable adjustments
between nations as ?? and circumstances proved necessary.
(The next two paragraphs are unreadable.)
“First, that the abolition of offensive armaments and the
limitation and reduction of defensive armaments and off tools which make the
construction of such armaments possible, can only be undertaken through some
rigid form of international supervision and control, and that without such
practical and essential control, no real disarmament can ever be achieved; and,
“Second, that no peace which may be made in the future would
be valid or lasting unless it established fully and adequately the natural
rights of all peoples to equal economic enjoyment. So long as any one people or
any one government possesses a monopoly over natural resources or raw materials
which are needed by all peoples, there can be no basis for a world order based
on justice and on peace.
“I cannot believe that peoples of good will will not once
more strive to realize the great ideal of an association of nations through
which the freedom, the happiness and the security of all peoples may be
achieved.
“The word, security, represents the end upon which the
hearts of men and women everywhere today are set.
“Whether it be security from bombing from the air, or from
mass destruction; whether it be security from want, disease and starvation;
whether it be security in enjoying the inalienable right which every human
being should possess of living out his life in peace and happiness, people
throughout the length and breadth of the world are demanding security, and
freedom from fear.
“That is the objective before us all today—to try and find
the means of bringing that to pass.”
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