The Waterbury Democrat., 1935-11-11
The Broken Promise

It may sound strange to say that we do not think enough of the dead on ArmiStice Day; but we do not, and the proof of it is to be seen in the great fleets and armies which are symbols of the worlds slow but steady march toward new war. More than eight and one-half million young men went to their deaths in the World War. 'They supposed, all ot them, that they were fighting to make the world somehow better place to live in: they hoped, and were told so to hope by the men who sent them out to die, that through the sacrifice of their lives it was going to be possible to devise some sort of world order in which wars could here after be avoided. No one needs to look around the world very long today to see how tragically that hope has been dashed.
 In Africa the fighting is on. Black men and white men expose their bodies to the fiendiShly ingenious devices which the modern world has invented for its SpreeS of mass murder. The thunder or guns, the whine of approaching shells, the Staccato rat-tat of machine guns those noises that we hoped had been Stilled forever, on November II, 1918 -- are sounding again, and the price or their sounding is the same as 1t was before
 Elsewhere the fighting has not started vet. But Japanese troops watch the marches of Manchukuo, and Soviet troops drill in the wind-Swept towns opposite them Germany huns with busy factor ies turning out planes, tanks, guns, war ships and all the other paraphernalia of slaughter France keeps an army watch full behind the greatest chain of forts the world has ever seen. England's gray walled sea dogs ride the Mediterranean, waiting for the fateful signal.
 In dozen other countries, men march and drill and prepare for the day; and our own country spends huge sums to get it's fleet and it's fighting planes ready. That, one hardly needs to say, is not picture of world that expects to remain at peace. It is sorry and tragic con- mentary on the high hopes that we held that first ArmiStice Day; and it is an un- speakably cruel betrayal of the phrases with which more than eight million men were led to die.
 Perhaps if we could see all those eight million we would be so shocked, so pro- foundly moved in the very bottom of our hearts, that we would have the courage to redeem our forgotten pledge to them. We would have watch for long, long time to see their ranks pass by; all the soldiers who have fought in all our wars would not equal them in number. There is no way of making our imaginations comprehend what tremendous army the army of the World War dead really is.
 Nor is there, either, any way of com pretending just how much unbelievable human suffering that war cost. The physical pain suffered by the fighting men, the heart-crushing anguish suffered by those they left behind, the long and pitiful misery visited upon Heaven knows how many millions of children whose homes were broken by the war, whose bodies were StJnted by famine. whose lives were ruined by war-born chaos - there simply is not any way of totaling all that agony.
 But we need to think about it, on Armistice Day above all other days. Until we actually do something in the way of making this warleSs world, all that sui fering and loss has gone for nothing - mockery of every hope humanity ever had. Until we find the courage to make that promise of lasting peace and bet ter world something more than an empty phrase, we must be recorded as the ig- noblest of all the earth's generations - generation condemned by eight and one half million dead men