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332 Nay, pacifist, nay, the lover of peace,

Because he loves it, must stand its friend:

In sorrow for agony's brief increase,

Yet smiting, at need, till war shall cease—

All for the peace that shall not end!

THESE TEN YEARS SINCE WE WENT TO WAR

(Editorial from The New York Evening Post)

(April 6, 1927)

is not altogether easy to recapture the mood with which, on April 6, 1917, the people of this country received the news that we were at war with Germany. There was nothing of elation in that mood, although there was a pervading satisfaction that at last we were making the proper reply to a challenge which was more and more insistently being flung at our feet.

For three years we had watched the titanic struggle across the sea, observing horror piled on horror until we wondered how human flesh and blood and resolution could endure the ghastly load. A people that at such a moment entered the war light-heartedly would have been demonstrating its unfitness to have a part in the combat. Not such was our mood. We took up the gage of battle with the grim determination to quit us