The Armistice was signed. The guns had stopped. For a breathless moment the world stood still. The price was paid. The youth of England and France lay upturned to the sky. Three thousand miles across the ocean American mothers wept their unburied sons. Did Germany shed tears of sorrow or rage?
The world travail was over, and even at that sacred moment when humanity should have been purged of all pettiness and meanness, should have bowed down in humility and thankfulness, forces were astir to try and raise up jealousy, hatred and enmity between England, France and America.
Have we learnt _nothing_? Are these million dead in vain? Are we to let the pendulum swing back to the old rut of dishonest hypocritical self-seeking, disguised under the title of that misunderstood word “patriotism?” Have we not yet looked into the eyes of Truth and seen ourselves as we are? Is all this talk of world peace and league of nations mere newspaper cant, to disguise the fear of being out-grabbed at the peace conference? Shall we return to lying, hatred and all malice and re-crucify Christ? What is the world travail for? To produce stillborn through our own negligence the hope of Peace? The leopard cannot change his spots, you say. My answer is that the leopard does not want to. What does the present hold out to us who have been through the Valley of the Shadow? What does it look like to us who gaze down upon it from the pinnacle of four years upon the edge of eternity?
Your old men shall see visions and your young men shall dream dreams.
The vision of the old men has been realized. In the orgy of effort for world domination they have dug up a world unrest fertilized by the sightless faces of youth upturned to the sky. Their working hypothesis was false. The result is failure. They have destroyed themselves also in the conflagration which they started. It has burnt up the ancient fetishes, consumed their shibboleths. Their day is done. They stand among the still-smoking ruins, naked and very ugly.
The era of the young men has begun. Bent under the Atlas-like burden loaded upon their shoulders, they have stood daily for five years upon the edge of eternity. They have stared across into the eyes of Truth, some unrecognizing, others with disdain, but many there are in whose returning faces is the dawn of wisdom. They are coming back, the burden exchanged. On them rests the fate of the unborn. Already their feet are set upon the new way. But are they strong enough unaided to keep the pendulum from swinging back? No. It is too heavy. Every one of us must let ourselves hear the new note in their voices, calling us to the recognition of the ideal. For five years all the science, philosophy and energy of mankind has been concentrated on the art of dealing death. The young men ask that mankind should now concentrate on the art of giving life. We have proved the power within us because the routine of the world’s great sin has established this surprising paradox, that we daily gave evidence of heroism, tolerance, kindliness, brotherhood.