I’m
sorry, but I don’t want to be an emperor. That’s not my business.
I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help
everyone if possible- Jew, Gentile, black men, white…
We
all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to
live by each others’ happiness, not by each other’s misery. We
don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is
room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for
everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost
the way.
Greed
has poisoned men’s souls; has barricaded the world with hate; has
goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed,
but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has
left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical; our cleverness,
hard and unkind.
We
think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need
humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness.
Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.
The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very
nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in man; cries
out for universal brotherhood; for the unity of us all.
Even
now my voice is reaching millions throughout
the world, millions of despairing men, women, and little children,
victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent
people.
To
those who can hear me, I say “Do not despair.”
The misery that
is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who
fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and
dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to
the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.
Soldiers!
Don’t give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you and enslave
you; who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and
what to feel! Who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle, use you
as cannon fodder!
Don’t
give yourselves to these unnatural men—machine men with machine
minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle!
You are men! You have a love of
humanity in your hearts! You don’t hate!
Only
the unloved hate; the unloved and the unnatural.
Soldiers!
Don’t fight for slavery! Fight for liberty!
In
the seventeenth chapter of St. Luke, it’s written “the kingdom of
God is within man”, not one man nor a group of men, but in all men!
In you! You, the people, have the power, the power to create
machines, the power to create happiness! You, the people, have the
power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a
wonderful adventure. Then in the name of democracy, let us use that
power.
Let
us all unite.
Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give
youth a future and old age a security. By the promise of these
things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie! They do not fulfill
their promise. They never will!
Dictators
free themselves but they enslave the people!
Now
let us fight to fulfill that promise! Let us fight to free the world!
To do away with national barriers! To do away with greed, with hate
and intolerance!
Let
us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress
will lead to all men’s happiness.
Soldiers,
in the name of democracy, let us all unite!
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