So the youth appear to
have died for a tariff, perished for trade routes and harbors, for
the furthering of the commercial advantages of this nation as against
that, for the seizing of the markets of the world. They supposed they
fought 'to end business of that sort' but they returned to find their
accredited representatives contemplating universal military service
in frank expectation of 'the next war.' They strove for the
'self-determination of peoples' but find that it was for some people,
but not all. And as for the cooperation among nations, Judge Gary has
recently told us that, as a result of the war, we should prepare for
'the fiercest commercial struggle in the history of mankind!'"[19]
[Footnote 19: _Can the Church Survive_? pp. 14 ff.]
Is it not clear, then, today that behind the determining as
distinguished from the fighting forces of the war there lay a
commercial and financial imperialism, directed by small and powerful
minorities, largely supported by a sympathetic press which used the
machinery of representative democracy to overthrow a more naked and
brutal imperialism whose machinery was that of a military autocracy?
Motives, scales of value, methods and desired ends, were much the same
for all these small governing groups as they operated from behind the
various shibboleths whose magic they used to nerve the arms of the
contending forces.
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