Never Again! A Protest and a Warning Addressed to the Peoples of Europe

by Edward Carpenter

Let us acknowledge even at the last that the War may have been a, necessary evil to show us by contrast the way, of deliverance;

Let us render, homage to those who have given their lives in it; let us vow that their great sacrifice shall not be in vain, but shall consecrate for us a new purpose and a new ideal;

Let us believe that Love, not Hatred, is the power by which in the end the World will be saved;

And let us pray that a Heroism equal to that, shown to-day in the cause of Destruction may urge us in the future towards a great and glorious Constructive era in social life — and inspire us with a new hope:

Out of purgatory to build a paradise, in which the ugliness, vulgarity, sordidness and cruelty of the present scheme of things will be repeated.

August 1916