They shudder at the floods of human woe which are
about to overwhelm Europe.
Hence, thinking Americans cannot help reflecting on the causes of this
monstrous outbreak of primitive savagery--part of them come down from
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and part developed in the
nineteenth--and wondering what good for mankind, if any, can possibly
come out of the present cataclysm.
The whole people of the United States, without regard to racial origin,
are of one mind in hoping that mankind may gain out of this prodigious
physical combat, which uses for purposes of destruction and death all
the new forces of nineteenth-century applied science, some new liberties
and new securities in the pursuit of happiness; but at this moment they
can cherish only a remote hope of such an issue. The military force
which Austria-Hungary and Germany are now using on a prodigious scale,
and with long-studied skill, can only be met by similar military force,
and this resisting force is summoned more slowly than that of
Austria-Hungary and Germany, although the ultimate battalions will be
heavier. In this portentous physical contest the American people have no
part; their geographical position, their historical development, and
their political ideals combine to make them for the present mere
spectators, although their interests--commercial, industrial, and
political--are deeply involved.
Pages:
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199