face of
the earth has cost more than the blood and treasure of the race--it
has involved a terrific strain on the mind and soul of man.

The blasting of hundreds of villages, the sinking of thousands of
ships, and the killing of millions of men is no small monument to
the power of the human will. Deplore as we may the sanguinary
ends to which this will has been bent, it has at any rate shown itself
to be no weakling. We must marvel at the grim tenacity with which
it has held to its goal through the long red years.

But now it is challenged by an infinitely bigger task.

The great nations sundered apart by this hideous anarchy have
become hissings and by-words to each other. One group has
been cast outside the Pale to become the Ishmaels of the
universe. The purpose is to keep them there.

Yet try as we may we cannot live upon a totally disrupted planet
without bringing a common disaster upon us all. It may be a matter
of decades and generations but eventually the reconciliation must
come.

To start civilization on the upward path again, to make the world
into a neighborhood anew, to achieve the moral unity of humanity,
is that infinitely bigger task with which the human will is challenged.
As in the last years it has relentlessly concentrated its energies
upon the Great War, now through the next decades and generations
it must as steadfastly hold them to the Great Reconciliation. The
tragedy of it all is that humanity must go at this crippled by a hatred
like acid eating into the soul.

Villages will arise again from their ruins, the plow shall turn anew
the shell-pitted fields into green meadow-lands, a kindly nature will
soon obliterate the scars upon the landscape, but not the deep
searings on the soul. Europe must grapple with this work of
reconstruction handicapped by this black devil poisoning the mind
and vitiating every effort. The worst curse bequeathed to the
coming generations is not the mountain of debt but this heritage of
hate.

It does not behoove Americans to stand on inviolate shores and
prate of the wickedness of wrath. Moreover, this evil is not to be
exorcised by a pious wish for it not to be. It is. And there is every
excuse under the arch of heaven for its existence.

If we had felt the eagles' claws tearing at our flesh; if, like Europe,
our soil was crimsoned with the blood of our murdered; if millions
of our women were breaking their hearts in anguish--we too would
consider it a grat