I have one sentiment for the soldiers living and
dead: Cheers for the living and tears for the dead.
FOOTNOTE:
[59] By permission of the publisher, C. P. Farrell.
WAR IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY[60]
EDWIN D. MEAD
It is a great mistake to think, as many are apt to do when some terrible
war overwhelms some part of the world, that war is on the increase among
men and that we are probably on the eve of a portentous new era of it.
The temptation to think so is strong when two or three such wars come at
the same time, waged by enlightened nations which we had fondly trusted
had got beyond such wickedness and folly. But there is no warrant for
the belief. There is seldom real warrant for any fear that the world
generally is going backward, although it would be stupid not to see that
there come many days which are far behind many yesterdays in insight, in
ideals, and in conduct. The long view is the encouraging view, the view
of progress.
We have entered a new century. As one looks back over the nineteenth
century, which has closed, as one reads perhaps some brief historical
survey of the century, it is worth while to ask oneself whether one
would rather live in 1800 or in 1900, in the world pictured in the first
pages of the book or that pictured in the last pages.
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