The Penn's Grove record., 1920-10-29
The Greatest Human Effort


Philadelphia Ledger, March 10. 1919.
The proposal to create a League
Of Nations"-let is say it with all
reverence-is the greatest single eff
fort to promote human happiness, pre-
serve human life and lift human exist
ence to a higher plane that has been
seer in the world since the preaching
of the Sermon on the Mount. The
idea is a magnificent, a matchlessly
beneficent, a millennial idea which is
far better worth pushing to the vic
tory than was even the military
campaign against German autocracy.
When we smashed the German army
we put an end to wars made in Ger
many for some considerable time.
If we succeed in launching the League
and giving it teeth we may put an
end to all war for all time. That is
the difference between the victory we
have won and the victory we can win.
1t is a difference which might be
measured in tens of millinos of lives,
in the transfer of bloated billions of
wealth from the business of killing
men to the business of clothing them
in comfort. 1t is the difference be-
tween periodic visits to hell and per-
petual heaven. But what the Ameri-
can people, Republicans and Demo-
Gratis, Independents and indifferents,
should get in their minds is that they
are summoned at this most pregnant
hour to sit in judgment-possibly in
final judgment-on a modern messi-
anic movement for the earthly saliva
ton of mankind T.. Few men of
larger mind and statesmanlike outlook
show any party bias in their treat
ment of the issue. 1t is the mental
dwarf who cannot see over the party
barrier. The world is in the melting
pot; and we are called upon to help
choose the lasting mold into which
it will be run.
If any would get a proper perspec-
tive of the figures of Wilson and the
League of which he is the leading
champion, they can secure it by ask
ing themselves what would be the po-
sition of President Wilson before the
nation and, indeed, all the nations, to-
day, if he had not planted himself on
the platform of the League. Let us
suppose that President Wilson had
cotented himself with being merely
War President and were now en-
gagged in either watching or joining in
a sordid scramble for "the spoils" in
Paris. The American people as a
whole would protest with Impotence
or with indignation that it was not for
this they had sacrificed their choicest
blood. But the Presidents steadfast
and unwavering espousal of the
League plan for the Punishment of wal
has given him an entirely unique po-
sition before his fellow-countrymen
and the workers, the thinkers, the
hopers of the world. 1t is the cour-
age and conviction in standing up to
be shot at by every medieval survivor,
every pagan pessimist, every oppon-
.nt of progress, every prospective
profiteer, from clinging to the old sys-
that has made him the Wilson of
the present moment.
We may be proud that the man on
the hopes of humanity hang is
our President; but when Americans of
the next century look back, they will
no more understand the mental pro
of those who reject the League
because they do not "like Wilson"
than we would understand Americans
of 1875 who should have opposed
American independence because George
Washington was pock-marked.-Led-
ger.