Page:Mead - The Overthrow of the War System.pdf/17



The pall of persecution which for centuries hung over witch and heretic vanished with the eighteenth century. The whip and slave block vanished with the next century. If America has the moral power to rise to her opportunity, the twentieth century may banish the accursed war system from an imperiled world.

The press is spreading millions of pages of censored war-news before dazed and weary readers, too numb or too unimaginative to feel. The publishers have issued two thousand books upon the war. Why add another to the list? Because, peradventure, it may meet some of the multitudes who need help to interpret in terms of duty the stunning phenomenon before their eyes and who grope shortsightedly through myriads of facts to find any vital truth to guide their immediate action. Hundreds of public meetings have sent them away pitifully ignorant that there stands waiting for them a task that calls with trumpet tones for instant activity of mind and heart and tongue. The