Is there a man in the world to-day who, beholding such horrors, would not strive with all his strength to so order things that the hell of war should be made impossible henceforth? Therefore, I have recorded in some part what I have seen of war.
So now, all of you who read, I summon you in the name of our common humanity, let us be up and doing. Americans—Anglo-Saxons, let our common blood be a bond of brotherhood between us henceforth, a bond indissoluble. As you have now entered the war, as you are now our allies in deed as in spirit, let this alliance endure hereafter. Already there is talk of some such League, which, in its might and unity, shall secure humanity against any recurrence of the evils the world now groans under. Here is a noble purpose, and I conceive it the duty of each one of us, for the sake of those who shall come after, that we should do something to further that which was once looked upon as only an Utopian dream—the universal Brotherhood of Man.
“The flowers o’ the forest are a’ faded away.”
Far and wide they lie, struck down in the flush of manhood, full of the joyous, unconquerable spirit of youth. Who knows what noble ambitions once were theirs, what splendid works they might not have wrought? Now they lie, each poor, shattered body a mass of loathsome corruption. Yet that diviner part, that no bullet may slay, no steel rend or mar, has surely entered into the fuller living, for Death is but the gateway into Life and infinite possibilities.
But, upon all who sit immune, upon all whom as yet this bitter war has left untouched, is the blood of these that died in the cause of humanity, the cause of Freedom for us and the generations to come, this blood is upon each one of us—consecrating us to the task they have died to achieve, and it is our solemn duty to see that the wounds they suffered, the deaths they died, have not been, and shall not be, in vain.