Books Should Be Free Loyal Books Free Public Domain Audiobooks & eBook Downloads |
|
The Soul of Democracy The Philosophy of the World War in Relation to Human Liberty By: Edward Howard Griggs (1868-1951) |
---|
![]()
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE WORLD WAR
IN RELATION TO HUMAN LIBERTY BY EDWARD HOWARD GRIGGS
Man for the State means autocracy and imperialism;
MAN FOR MANKIND is the soul of democracy. 1918 CONTENTS I THE WORLD TRAGEDY
II THE CONFLICT OF IDEAS IN THE WAR
III THE IDEAS FOR WHICH THE ALLIED NATIONS FIGHT
IV MORAL STANDARDS AND THE MORAL ORDER
V THE PRESENT STATE OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
VI THE ETHICS OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONSHIP
VII AMERICA'S DUTY IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
VIII THE GOSPEL AND THE SUPERSTITION OF NON RESISTANCE
IX PREPAREDNESS FOR SELF DEFENSE
X RECONSTRUCTION FROM THE WAR
XI THE WAR AND EDUCATION
XII SOCIALISM AND THE WAR
XIII THE WAR AND FEMINISM
XIV THE TRANSFORMATION OF DEMOCRACY
XV DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION
XVI MENACES OF DEMOCRACY
XVII THE DILEMMA OF DEMOCRACY
XVIII PATERNALISM VERSUS DEMOCRACY
XIX THE SOLUTION FOR DEMOCRACY
XX TRAINING FOR MORAL LEADERSHIP
XXI DEMOCRACY AND SACRIFICE
XXII THE HOUR OF SACRIFICE THE SOUL OF DEMOCRACY
I THE WORLD TRAGEDY We are living under the shadow of the greatest world tragedy in the
history of mankind. Not even the overthrow of the old Roman empire was
so colossal a disaster as this. Inevitably we are bewildered by it.
Utterly unanticipated, at least in its world extent, for we had believed
mankind too far advanced for such a chaos of brute force to recur, it
overwhelms our vision. Man had been going forward steadily, inventing
and discovering, until in the last hundred years his whole world had
been transformed. Suddenly the entire range of invention is turned
against Man. The machinery of comfort and progress becomes the enginery
of devastation. Under such a shock, we ask, "Has civilization
over reached itself? Has the machine run away with its maker?" The
imagination is staggered. We are too much in the storm to see across
the storm. When the War began, it was over our minds as a dark cloud. It was the
last conscious thought as we went to sleep at night, and the first to
which we awakened in the morning: wakening with a dumb sense of
something wrong, as if we had suffered a personal tragedy, and then as
we came to clear consciousness we said, "O yes, the War!" The days have
passed into weeks, the weeks into months and years: inevitably we become
benumbed to the long continued disaster. It is impossible to think
deaths and mutilations in terms of millions. Even those who stand in
the immediate presence of it and suffer most terribly become calloused
to it: much more must we who stood so long apart and have not yet felt
the brunt of it. Even our entrance into the whirling vortex, drawing
ever nearer our shores, has failed to waken us to a realizing sense of
it. Nevertheless, these years through which we are now living are the
most important in the entire history of the world. It is probable that
the future will look back upon them as the years determining the destiny
of mankind for ages to come. How this terrible fact of War falls across all philosophies! Complacent
optimisms, so widely current recently, are put out of court by it. The
pleasant interpretations mediocrity formulates of the universe are torn
to tatters. There is at least the refreshment of standing face to face
with brute actuality, though it crash all our "little systems" to the
ground. Philosophy must wait. The interpretations cannot be hastened,
while the facts are multiplying with such bewildering rapidity. The one
certainty is that an entirely new world is being born what it will
be, no one knows. Nevertheless, we have gone far enough to recognize that all our thinking
will be transformed under the influence of the struggle. It will be
impossible for us, after the War, to do what we have done so widely
hitherto: proclaim one range of ethical ideals and standards, and live
to something widely different in practice. Either we shall have to
abandon the standards, or bring our conduct measurably into harmony with
them... Continue reading book >>
|
Genres for this book |
---|
History |
War stories |
eBook links |
---|
Wikipedia – Edward Howard Griggs |
Wikipedia – The Soul of Democracy The Philosophy of the World War in Relation to Human Liberty |
eBook Downloads | |
---|---|
ePUB eBook • iBooks for iPhone and iPad • Nook • Sony Reader |
Kindle eBook • Mobi file format for Kindle |
Read eBook • Load eBook in browser |
Text File eBook • Computers • Windows • Mac |
Review this book |
---|