Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Pacifism -- Fiction; World War, 1914-1918 -- United States -- Fiction
Gradually in the voice of one and another, the word took shape—so
simply that the enormity of the import was pathetically lacking: That
representatives of the women of the world, united in a demand for
international righteousness, shall petition the men and women of the
world to turn to the new knowledge that war is an outworn way to settle
difficulties; that with one voice we shall all refuse any longer to let
the traditions of a past age be put upon us; that the old phrases and
catch-words shall not stand for one moment before the naked question
of the race: “Is this the best that life can do with life?” That we
shall learn from one another that there is no such thing as preparing
against war, but that to prepare for war breeds war—twin-born are the
slayer and the slain; that we shall teach one another that “Thou shalt
not kill” is not only moral law, but sound economic policy, for always
these two are one. And that from the constructive plans devised in
anguish and in hope by men and women of to-day, there be selected and
inaugurated a world programme for permanent peace without armistice
and a council of the nations looking toward the federation of the world.
“We have talked long enough of treaties and of arbitration,” they said.
“Let us have done with such play. Let us speak the phrase quite simply:
The federation of the world.”
And the message concluded:
“For we, the women of the world, have banded ourselves together to
demand that war be abolished.”
Last, he remembered a Voice. Afterward, he could not have told what
woman spoke, or of what nation they said that she had come. But what
she said was like the weaving of what the others had spun.
“_Remember,_” said her Voice, “_that all this is nothing. It is only
the body, made for the spirit. And the spirit is that new dominant mind
which shall be born in the world—the mind of love._
“_You’ll not get this by going to governments. You’ll not get this by
the meeting of groups of representative people. You’ll not get this
by International Police. These things must be—will be, as a matter of
course. But they will not be the mind of love._
“_Something will come into the world—and it will know nothing of
arbitration, it will know nothing of armistice, it will know nothing
of treaties; nor will it know anything of those other ways of secret
warfare by which great nations seem to keep clean hands: the ways of
‘high’ finance through ‘peaceful penetration.’_
“_Something will come into the world, and it will know nothing of
nations._
“_The little loyalties will go. National pride, national ‘honor,’
patriotism—all the little scaffolds will fall away. And within will be
the light that we lack._
“_It is the mind of love. I am not afraid to say that beside it,
governments are nothing. It is the mind of love. It may be in the
simplest cottage of a peasant who goes to the war for a false ideal.
But of this as yet the nations do not know._
“_What is it that we must know?_
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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