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4. Treasonable Lying and War.
Before human nature can be sufficiently embittered and terrified to produce war between great nations, someone must do a great deal of missionary work. The people must be prepared for war. They must be appealed to, stirred up, exasperated, enraged, infuriated.
A thorough-going war spirit can be extracted from life only after years of steeping and simmering. Children are taught to hate. In their games they slaughter their foes—by name. Then school books teach them to hate, by distorting the facts of history, and by misrepresenting their enemies. Their military drill and patriotic appeals teach them to hate, by making them believe that their country is the greatest, strongest country on earth, and their enemies' country is the weakest and meanest. Their churches teach them to hate by telling them that God is on their side, while their enemies are in league with the devil.
Thus steeped and schooled in hate, enthusiastic, patriotic and ignorant, they go out to wage war against oppression in the name of liberty.
The idea is splendidly developed in the following lines written by W. N. Ewer for the London "Nation":
FIVE SOULS
First Soul
I was a peasant of the Polish plain;
I left my plow because the message ran:
Russia, in danger, needed every man
To save her from the Teuton; and was slain.
I gave my life for freedom—This I know;
For those who bade me fight had told me so.
