I’m sorry but I don’t want to be an
Emperor – that’s not my business – I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I
should like to help everyone if possible, Jew, gentile, black man, white. We
all want to help one another, human beings are like that.
We all want to live by each other’s
happiness, not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one
another. In this world there is room for everyone and the earth is rich and can
provide for everyone.
The way of life can be free and
beautiful.
But we have lost the way.
Greed has poisoned men’s souls – has
barricaded the world with hate; has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed.
We have developed speed but we have shut
ourselves in: machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge
has made us cynical, our cleverness hard and unkind. We think too much and feel
too little: More than machinery we need humanity; More than cleverness we need
kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all
will be lost.
The aeroplane and the radio have brought
us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the
goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood for the unity of us all.
Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of
despairing men, women and little children, victims of a system that makes men
torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me I say “Do not
despair”.
The misery that is now upon us is but the
passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress: the
hate of men will pass and dictators die and the power they took from the
people, will return to the people and so long as men die [now] liberty will never
perish…
Soldiers – don’t give yourselves to
brutes, men who despise you and enslave you – who regiment your lives, tell you
what to do, what to think and what to feel, who drill you, diet you, treat you
as cattle, as cannon fodder.
Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural
men, machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts. You are not machines.
You are not cattle. You are men. You have the love of humanity in your hearts.
You don’t hate – only the unloved hate. Only the unloved and the unnatural.
Soldiers – don’t fight for slavery, fight for liberty.
In the seventeenth chapter of Saint Luke
it is written ” the kingdom of God is within man ” – not one man, nor a group
of men – but in all men – in you, the people.
You the people have the power, the power
to create machines, the power to create happiness. You the people have the
power to make life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure.
Then in the name of democracy let’s use that power – let us all unite. Let us
fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that
will give you the future and old age and security. By the promise of these
things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie. They do not fulfil their
promise, they never will. Dictators free themselves but they enslave the
people. Now let us fight to fulfil that promise. Let us fight to free the
world, to do away with national barriers, do away with greed, with hate and
intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress
will lead to all men’s happiness.
Soldiers – in the name of democracy, let
us all unite!
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