People Have Had
Enough
By Oswald F. Schuette
The people of Europe cannot be rallied into war again. This
is no idle prophecy. I know whereof I speak. The people of Europe know what war
means. We do not. They have had four
fearful years of it—years of bloodshed, of starvation, of devastation, of pestilence,
of anguish of mind and of soul. To us in the United States it meant two pounds
of sugar a week. How few of us ever missed a meal in all this world of hunger?
In France, every fourth man was in the casualty list. We had 1 in 20.
The people of Europe will not fight again for anybody’s imperialism.
Governments may fight for conquest Kaisers and generals and statesmen may make war
for glory. But the people fight only for peace. In this great war, on both
sides of the trenches, soldiers battled for peace and only for peace. They have
that peace now. Homeward bound from the trenches to mothers and wives and
sweethearts and children, no cry of conquest or revenge or indemnity can recall
them to the battlefield. If the peace terms at Paris are such that it takes
arms and bloodshed to enforce them, they will not be enforced. No soldier will
lay down his life to collect a dollar or a billion dollars.
What a bankruptcy of statesmanship it would be if the Paris conference
found no cure for the stricken nations but more war!
There lies the danger of driving the sword into the arms of
bolshevism. The people of Europe are not bolshevists at heart—not even in Russia.
But if the only refuge from war is bolshevism, they will fall under its flag.
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