“Do You Mean to Make a Real
War?”
“GERMANY has once more said that force, and force alone, shall decide whether justice and peace shall reign in the affairs of men, whether right as America conceives it or dominion as she conceives it shall determine the destinies of mankind. There is, therefore, but one response possible for us: Force, force to the utmost, force without stint or limit, the righteous and triumphant force which shall make right the law of the world and cast every selfish dominion down in the dust.”
—From President Wilson’s Message on the First Anniversary
of the Declaration of War, April 6, 1918.
Justice!
THE woman figure called Justice in Raemaekers’ cartoon has a Greek name. She is Themis, consort of Zeus, Themis, who sits by his side on the judgment seat. The scales are the scales of Ægina, in her day a great money centre, whose talent was the standard of value then, as the American dollar is to-day. Ægina was the mother of Æacus, one of the three great judges of the lower world, and be it remembered, it was Æacus that administered justice. Ægina is called by one of the greatest Greek poets the place where Themis is worshipped more than anywhere else on earth, and he tells us further that there was much weighing in Ægina, the Merchant State. Heavy weights there were in either scale. Much care was needful in the weighing, no little balancing doubtless. So there were many in our Ægina who felt the draw of kindred, of friendship, of fellowship. But this is the Day, the Day of Decision, the Day of Lord Æacus. After the knife edge of the balance comes the knife edge of the guillotine.
BASIL LANNEAU GILDERSLEEVE.
