The end of general peace is to give all nations freedom in
essentials, to realise the deeper purpose, possibilities, fulness and
beauty of life; it is not to have a peace at any price, peace with a
certain surrender, the meaner peace that is akin to slavery. No, its
message is to guard one nation from excess that has plunged another into
evil, to leave the way open to a final peace, not base but honourable;
it is to preserve the divine balance of the soul. It may be further
urged that we are engaged in a great fight; that to try to rouse in men
the more generous instincts will but weaken their hands by removing a
certain driving bitterness that gives strength to their fight. Whatever
it removes it will not be their strength. In a war admittedly between
brothers, a civil war, where different conceptions of duty force men
asunder, father is up against son, and brother against brother; yet they
are not weakened in their contest by ties of blood and the deeper-lying
harmony of things that in happier times prevail to the exclusion of
bitterness and hate. When, therefore, you teach a man his enemy is in a
deep sense his brother, you do not draw him from the fight, but you give
him a new conception of the goal to win and with a great dream inspire
him to persevere and reach the goal.
VI
If, then, beyond individual and national freedom there is this great
dream still to be striven for, let us not decry it as something too
sublime for earth.
Pages:
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54