Henry Ford's Own Story: How a Farmer Boy Rose to the Power that goes with Many Millions, Yet Never Lost Touch with HumanityLane, Rose Wilder
Philosophy
Henry Ford's Own Story: How a Farmer Boy Rose to the Power that goes with Many Millions, Yet Never Lost Touch with Humanity
Lane, Rose Wilder
Automobile industry and trade -- United States -- History; Businesspeople -- United States -- Biography; Ford, Henry, 1863-1947
"Shall we give them guns? They will be out of date. Shall we give them
poisonous gases, or disease germs, or shall we invent something even
more horrible? As fast as we make these things, other nations will make
worse ones.
"Shall we turn our factories into munition plants? Shall we build
dreadnoughts? The submarine destroys them. Shall we build submarines?
Other nations will make submarine-destroyers. Shall we build
submarine-destroyers? Other nations will build war-aeroplanes to destroy
them. We must make something worse than the aeroplanes, and something
worse still, and then something still more horrible, bidding senselessly
up and up and up, spending millions on millions, trying to outdo other
nations which are trying to outdo us.
"For if we begin to prepare for war we must not stop. We can not stop. I
read articles in the magazines saying that we might as well have no navy
at all as the one we have; that we might as well have no army as the
army we have, if this country should be invaded. Yet we have already
spent millions on that army and that navy. Let us spend millions more,
and more millions, and more, and still, unless we keep on spending more
than any other nation can spend, we might as well have no army or navy
at all.
"And yet there are people who think that to begin such a course is
'practical,' is good common sense!
"I tell you, the only real strength of a nation is the spirit of its
people. The only real, practical value in the world is the spirit of the
people of the world. There were animals on the earth ages ago who could
kill a hundred men with one sweep of a paw, but they are gone, and we
survive. Why? Because men have minds, because they use their minds in
doing useful things, making food, and clothes, and shelters.
"A few hundred years ago no man was safe on the street alone at night.
No woman was safe unless she had a man with her who was strong enough to
kill other men. We have changed all that. How? By force? No, because we
have learned in a small degree that there are things better than force.
We have learned that to look out for the interests of every one in our
community is best for us in the end.
"Let us realize that to think of the welfare of the whole world is best
for each one of us. We do not carry a gun so that if we meet an
Englishman on the street and he attacks us we can kill him. We know he
does not want to kill us.
"We know that the real people of the whole world do not want war. We do
not want war. There are only a few people who think they want war--the
politicians, the rulers, the Big Business men, who think they can profit
by it. War injures everybody else, and in the end it injures them, too.
"The way to handle the war question is not to waste more and more human
energy in getting ready to hurt the other fellow. We must get down to
the foundations; we must realize that the interests of all the people
are one, and that what hurts one hurts us all.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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