A TASK FOR ALL GOOD CITIZENS
Despite two glaring instances of Congressional insularity that are at present in our minds—passage of the Japanese Exclusion Act and two years’ delay in taking up the World Court—in the long run and haltingly a democratic government obeys the people’s will. If we want international law and order in place of war and chaos, we must say so and keep saying so.
How is public opinion created? How was Mr. Coolidge elected president? Talk, talk, talk and talk, talk, talk. Not, as it happens in this instance, by Mr. Coolidge but by those who wanted him for president. It was talk in the press and talk from the soapbox and talk in the circles in which one moved, talk with convincing earnestness, talk with arguments that reached down to the motives on which men really act.
Similarly in furthering the only policy that can save our country and our civilization from being ruined by another war, we must talk, talk, talk and talk, talk, talk—in the press, from the pulpit, in the schoolroom, in books, from the billboards, in public meetings, and through the programs of club and lodge and grange. We must work as men in haste, remembering that we are sure only of this “period of exhaustion,” in which to build machinery and world opinion, both strong enough to bear incredible strain. It will be only as by the skin of our teeth that the world will get by some of the danger corners that we all can see must be passed.
Why America particularly? Because what is whispered in America today echoes and re-echoes around the world.