The Overthrow of the War System (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III The Immediate Duty Of American Patriots By Lucia Ames Mead The European war probably marks the most critical period in human history. Civilization has come to a great turning point and faces two alternatives. One is renewed reliance on force; conscription extending gradually to America and the Orient; an armed Asia facing an armed Europe; decreasing democracy; repudiation of intolerable war debts and the decay of all that makes life worth living. The other alternative is initial steps through a League of Peace toward world organization and a beginning of that cooperation which can alone preserve nations from even a worse catastrophe than that which this tragic year has wrought. Amid the maddening maze of things, in which many trained minds have lost their bearings, a few points stand out clearly to those who have not been led into the quagmire of sophistry THE OVEETHROW OF THE WAR SYSTEM 37 that is so largely responsible for the great war. These permanent principles can not be understood unless one perceives the causes of the European war. Causes of the war This war was due largely to false premises, confused thinking, wrong analogies and twisted logic. These, through the teaching of chauvinistic patriotism and crude economics from primary school through university, led in many lands to a philosophy that bred national arrogance, and fear. Fear clamored for armaments, blind to the fact that these bred rival armaments or that there was any other defense of life or honor but explosives. This war was precipitated by men of twentieth century education in technique combined with seventeenth century conceptions of honor and international relations. It was largely the slow product of primary text book writers, of Harmsworth newspapers, of learned Teuton...