It took the human race many centuries to rid itself of human sacrifice; during many centuries more it relapsed again and again in periods of national despair. So have we fallen back into warfare, and perhaps will fall back again and again, until in self-pity, in self-defense, in self-assertion of the right of life, not as hitherto, a few, but the _whole people of the world_, will brook this thing no longer. OUR RIGHT TO PROTEST [Sidenote: We have a right to protest against war.] By that opportunity, now ours as never before, to weigh the case against war and to draw the counts from burning words spoken by those who protest and who are of all peoples—_we make single judgment and complete indictment_. By that good fortune which has placed us outside the conflict; by that ill fortune by which the belligerent and his rights have heretofore bestrode the world; by mine-strewn channels, and by international codes which offer scant redress—_we speak as people of a neutral nation_. By the unemployed of our water-fronts, and the augmented misery of our cities; by the financial depression which has curtailed our school building and crippled our works of good-will; by the sluicing of human impulse among us from channels of social development to the back-eddies of salvage and relief—_we have a right to speak_. By the hot anger and civil strife that we have known; by our pride, vain-glory, and covetousness; by the struggles we have made for national integrity and defense of our hearthstones; by our consciousness that every instinct and motive and ideal at work in this war, however lofty or however base, has had some counterpart in our national history and our current life—_we can speak a common language_. By that comradeship among nations which has made for mutual understanding; by those inventions which have bound us in communication and put the horrors of war at our doors; by the mechanical contrivances which multiply and intensify those horrors; by the quickening human sympathies which have made us sensitive to the hurts of others—_we can speak as fellow-victims of this great oppression_. By our heritage from each embattled nation; by our debt to them for languages and faiths and social institutions; for science, scholarship and invention; by the broken and desolated hearts that will come to us when the war ends; by our kinships and our unfeigned friendships—_we can speak as brothers_. By all these things, we hold the present opportunity for conscience-searching and constructive action to be an especial charge upon us; upon the newcomers among us from the fatherlands; and upon the joint youth of all the peoples of the two Americas. WHAT WAR HAS DONE AND IS DOING _Its Blights_ [Sidenote: War has blighted Life.] War has brought low our conception of the _preciousness of human life_ as slavery brought low our conception of human liberty.