Page:Mead - The Overthrow of the War System.pdf/18

 summons is to study the remedy for the world’s present woe and then to help create a public opinion that may save the world ere exhaustion, bitterness and bankruptcy leave Christendom lower than heathendom.

The following pages have been written with a modest hope that a small, untechnical book, written by those who are largely giving their lives to the greatest problems before humanity, might stir the hopeless and help the bewildered. Millions would respond had they hope that there was anything valid which non-voters or average men could do. To all these, and especially to the nearly two million women who in organized clubs have leisure for study, we urge that the critical situation and America’s obligation take precedence of those minor matters that we have with us always. Let the economic illusions and the hoary fallacies that are the cause of every war be examined. Let the most time be spent not on unrelated details but on the philosophy of all war and its remedy world organization. The Minimum Program and other programs in the appendix deserve careful study. They contain the quintessence of the best thought of many experts and, though coming from different lands, are strikingly harmonious. From these it will be seen that the plans presented aim not