An essay on the American contribution and the democratic ideaChurchill, Winston
Philosophy
An essay on the American contribution and the democratic idea
Churchill, Winston
Democracy; World War, 1914-1918 -- United States
In fighting Germany we are indeed fighting an evil Will--evil because it
seeks to crush the growth of individual and national freedom. Its object
is to put the world back under the thrall of self-constituted authority.
So long as this Will can compel the bodies of soldiers to do its
bidding, these bodies must be destroyed. Until the Will behind them is
broken, the world cannot be free. Junkerism is the final expression
of reaction, organized to the highest efficiency. The war against the
Junkers marks the consummation of a long struggle for human liberty in
all lands, symbolizes the real cleavage dividing the world. As in the
French Revolution and the wars that followed it, the true significance
of this war is social. But today the Russian Revolution sounds the
keynote. Revolutions tend to express the extremes of the philosophies
of their times--human desires, discontents, and passions that cannot be
organized. The French Revolution was a struggle for political freedom;
the underlying issue of the present war is economic freedom--without
which political freedom is of no account. It will not, therefore,
suffice merely to crush the Junkers, and with them militarism and
autocracy. Unless, as the fruit of this appalling bloodshed and
suffering, the democracies achieve economic freedom, the war will
have been fought in vain. More revolutions, wastage and bloodshed will
follow, the world will be reduced to absolute chaos unless, in the more
advanced democracies, an intelligent social order tending to remove
the causes of injustice and discontent can be devised and ready for
inauguration. This new social order depends, in turn, upon a world order
of mutually helpful, free peoples, a league of Nations.--If the world
is to be made safe for democracy, this democratic plan must be ready for
the day when the German Junker is beaten and peace is declared.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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