Lord Robert Cecil Declares That Whole Future of Our Civilization Depends on Getting Rid of War

(The following is a statement written especially for the Crimson by Lord Robert Cecil during his stay in Boston).

I respond with great pleasure to an invitation to write a message for the Harvard CRIMSON. I always count well spent the hours I may chance to have at any university; it is a very special privilege to be the guest of the oldest and one of the most famous of the great universities of the United States, and of a university which is so closely linked as Harvard by historical association and by present comradeship with the universities of England.

May I try in a few lines to express what I believe to be the most important thing that anyone of my passing generation can say to the generation which is now in college and which in a few years' time will be taking over from the hands of those who now control them the destinies of the nations of the world?

It is this. There is in our day and generation one issue which dominates every other question, political, moral, or social. It is an issue at once political, moral, and social, in the deepest meaning of these words. It is an issue on which the whole future of our civilization, the whole future of the material and intellectual and spiritual progress of mankind depends. This issue is whether we can rid ourselves of war. If we can, our civilization will survive. If we cannot, our civilization will survive. If we cannot, our civilization is inevitably doomed, and will take its place with the perished glories of Nineveh, of Luxor and of Rome.

Can we rid ourselves of war? I am convinced we can, if we will but set about it with an unbending resolution to achieve our end. The forces on our side are strong: the human instinct of cooperation, the universal desire for equal justice, the passionate hatred of every people in the world for the barbarous arbitrament of the sword. They are forces which are seeking for expression; forces which will need to be mobilized to control the policy of the government of every country.

There lies the task of those who read the CRIMSON. As your generation succeeds or fails in this task, so will you and your children's children live in happiness or perish in unparalleled catastrophes. A foundation has been laid. What will you build on it?