The potters herald. [volume] (East Liverpool, Ohio) 1899-1982, 1942-09-17

Well, there were lot of Labor Day
speeches, most of which could have
been recited in advance by most listen
ers
That doesn't mean that they weren't
good speeches. BY and large they were.
But there were certain things that
had to be said, obviously. They were
said.
The speakers then wiped their brows
and went home.
Labor is doing the producing. 1t is
turning out the stuff. 1t is manning the
jobs that have to be manned if fighting
men are to be kept up front.
But somehow, in all the speeches,
| something seems lacking. Up to this
point we have war on our hands.
What we've got to have, if we are to
win, is crusade
The difference between a war and a
crusade is something like this: A war
is something you have to win if you
can; a crusade is something that by
heaven you WILL win, though all the
furies of hell are lOOsed against you.
Your SPIRIT as well as your shoot
ing eye is in a crusade. The fires burn
and you forget everything else
X X X
Somehow we don't seem to know
yet, as people, that our most scred
rights are at stake in this war.
We win this war or our very souls
will be choked out of us by a brutal
and heartless conqueror.
History tells us of Holy wars.
This is THE holy war of all time.
This is the testing of our faith in
freedom, our hatred of enslavement.
In THIS war we shall have to be
as ruthless as our enemies, because by
it's outcome we live or die.
1t is not that our physical bodies
may be lost. 1t is that our freedom will
be lost; that our enemies stand for
enslavement in its most hateful and
most hated forms
1t takes the awful and beautiful
profanity of the sailor to pile up the
righteous wrath we must feel against
our enemies.
1t takes some of the blunt and mean
ingful words of the English language
to spill forth our horror and hate for
the beasts that stand against us and
force us to turn our nation into an
arsenal and into armies.
We haven't used those words enough.
When we feel deeply enough the
enormous meaning of this war we shall
begin to think and feel and talk in the
plain terms of men who know what
they have to do and are willing to
do it.
Some things we have to keep straight
among us as we fight this war. But
once the deep conviction strikes into
us that here, in this titanic struggle
everything is at stake, we shall pass
over the piddling things that too often
now stop production and delay the
munitions that are required in such
astronomic numbers by war that is
the epitome in power and machinery
in mass killing.
A house on fire is trihing, insight
ticant thing, compared to this war.
But EVERYONE rushes to help put
out a fire.
What we have today is not house
on fire. 1t is WORLD on fire and
unless WE put out the fire we have
NO house i'm which to live. We have
then only slave pens in which to exist
titfully, in shame, in misery and in Il
humiliation that would be worse than
death.
1t is said of lieutenant in that other
World War that he led his men forth
with the wonderfully inspiring and eff
fective cry, Come on you so-and-sos,
do you want to live forever!" They
came forth and they got where they
started to go.
We don't yet seem to feel that here
is the top crisis that stands atop all
history up to this point.
We have got to feel holy wrath
at the barbaric hOrdes that challenge
all things for which we care We have
got to be mad as hell and your our
flaming souls into the winning of this
war. We face something which we
HAVE TO DESTROY ,-CNIW.