Thus, "with malice toward none," and with the highest respect for your
expressed views, I am still of the opinion that there can be no greater
service rendered to mankind than to make the effort, either through the
force of public opinion of the two Americas, or otherwise, to bring
these warring Governments together at an early moment, even if this can
only be done without stopping their conflict, so that they may make the
endeavor, whether--with their costly experience of the last five months,
with the probability that they now know better what need be done to make
the extreme armaments on land and sea as unnecessary as they are
undesirable in the future--a basis cannot be found upon which
disarmament can be effectively and permanently brought about.
This, at some time, they will have come to, in any event, and must there
first more human lives be sacrificed into the hundreds and hundreds of
thousands, and still greater havoc be wrought, before passions can be
made to cease and reason be made to return?
If, as you seem to think, the war need go on until one country is beaten
into a condition where it must accept the terms the victor chooses to
impose, because it can no longer help itself to do else, the peace thus
obtained will only be the harbinger of another war in the near or
distant future, bloodier probably than the present sanguinary conflict,
and through no compact which might be entered into will it be possible
to actually prevent this.
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