Destroy the Mad Dog, The Find way to Live in Peace and Goodwill, 1941

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.”