PRESS

We may, if we are sufficiently unintelligent and sufficiently cowardly, merely sit still and deplore it all (the war). We may wring our hands and express our deep regret that such things as these could still happen in our modern world. Nevertheless, the question presses for answer--What are we going to do about it?

The most inadequate of answers is that we Americans are neutral and, therefore, need do nothing whatever about it. If that were proposed as an explanation of why one did nothing when he saw women and children tortured by fire, or a passerby of whom he had no knowledge, being assaulted by a bandit within plain sight, we should have but one comment to make and that comment would not be very flattering.

It is precisely this same comment which is called for if we sit still and watch assault, arson and murder on a huge national and international scale and do nothing about it.....

If we were obliged to find our answer in the proceedings of the United States Senate, as printed day by day in the Congressional Record, we should have to say that it would be such an answer as the super-verbose and dimly lighted might be expected to give. Is it possible that we Americans cannot do better than that? Nicholas Murray Butler   in the Columbia Spectator

(Ed. Note: The president of Columbia University is also the president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.)