THE WILL TO PEACE
In this world-crisis the American people need to search their hearts and determine whether their ideals of peace are based on softness, effeminacy, disinclination to exertion and sacrifice, love of ease and pleasure, or upon absolute principle. In either case, we must arouse ourselves and cast off sloth. Peace is not to be had except with righteousness. The will to peace must be buttressed in strength, and not in weakness. In the present temper of the world, international friendship doesn’t seem to count. The nations have lapsed into sheer materialism. Each one is seeking its own aims and interests. Such alliances as exist are made because each member of the alliance believes that its interests will be better served by that combination than by any other. Every one of the lesser states of Europe not already engaged in the war is striving anxiously to determine on which side its bread is buttered—that is whether continued neutrality or active participation on one side or the other will best serve its turn.
The proper policy of the United States is neutrality, but we will gain nothing by toadying to one belligerent or another. Our treatment by the victor in the war, if the war ends in victory for one side or the other, will not be gauged by the friendship we have displayed, or the disappointment which our conduct has occasioned, but by our strength or weakness. We will have to rely upon our own resources and not upon anybody’s favor. Our aim as a nation should be, first to preserve our standards of honor and independence. We should truckle to no one. Next, to do absolute justice and to uphold the standard of humanity. We may not be able to prevent any modification of international law or changes in international rules of warfare, in view of vastly changed conditions, but we can insist upon the respect due to us as a great nation.
The United States has a legitimate “place in the sun,” and it must maintain that place morally also physically if need be. It is a time of human convulsion when any display of weakness and timidity will invite destruction.