The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1917-11-02
THE REASON WHY
THIS is OUR WAR.
The Manufacturers Record.

The Manufacturers Record.
We are too much inclined to pat
ourselves on the back and say that we
are in this war to save democracy, to
save England and France and Bel
quinn and Russia and Italy as we'll as
ourselves. We are prone to con-
graduate ourselves upon u unset
fshness and our readiness to risk the
lives of our soldiers to make civiliza-
ton safe, or to make democracy safe
AS a matter of fact, we are in this
war purely and wholly from the one
selfish reason of trying to save our
selves and the women of this land
from complete destruction.
We did not enter the war to save
other people, and to that extent we
are almost particeps criminals with TIE
murderers and outragers who fol
three years before we entered the war
had been o~verruning civilization.
We stood by like towards who saw
women and children being attacked
by brutes, but we were too anxious
to save ourselves from possible injury
to rush to the side of those who were
fighting for these vernon, and who in
doing so we're standing between us
and the brutes.
We saw the Belgium overrun and
horrors enacted such as the world
had never known, but we raised nc
voice in protest.
We saw France-beautiful France
in the throes of the death struggle,
but we raised no hand to save her.
We saw millions dying of starva-
ton and suffering, but gave a beg
carly nothing almost even out of the
vast wealth we had accumulated to
help the dying and starving, the
wounded and all whose cry went up
in agony to heaven.
We saw millions of Christians bu;
chered in cold blood in Armenia,
but we shut our ears to the sound of
their voices.
We saw helpless babies butchered;
we saw children driven off into the
snow and ice, dying by the wayside,
their bones bleaching along hundreds
of miles of awful roads that led
! through Poland and Russia and Ser
bia and Armenia; but we drew back
and hid ourselves even from a sight
of these horrors.
We did not want to get a glimpse
of this inferno-by the side of which
Dante's was Heaven itself-break
in upon our comfort and Ease and
our moneymaking activities.
We saw England-the mother
country of our language, the coun-
try whose flag has for a century
meant law and order and civilization
wherever it foated, the country of
freedom greater than u own free
dom, the country which gave birth
to Milton and Bunyan and Shakes
peare and thousands of others whose
names have been writ deep into hu-
man history-struggle to rally its
forces and create an army to save
itself from destruction and to meet
its responsibilities to Belgium and
France.
We saw the English fleet sweep
from the ocean German shipping,
and we saw that we were hiding be-
hind the English fleet, skulking in
the rear, knowing that so long as
that fleet held the ocean our cities
along the coast were free from the
ravages of Germany's navy; and we
knew full we'll that there was no
other salvation for US but to hide
behind this fleet, and, towards like,
we hid.
We contributed little or nothing
out of u boundless wealth to help
the starving, while England and
France poured out their hundreds of
millions, even amid their vast war
activities, to rescue the living and
feed the starving in Belgium and
France. AS a nation we gave no
word of comfort or sympthy to these
nations who in fighting their battle
were fighting for our life.
And yet we sometimes dare to
stand in the presence of Almighty
God and talk as though we had been
moved by a spirit of world patriot
ism and world sympathy and a love
of civilization to enter the war. One
may we'll sometimes wonder that the
Almighty did not smite US with de-
struction as we gathered to our
selves the vast wealth that was being
created, and which had been created