Van Doorne 229
INTRODUCTION
By Theodore Roosevelt
On August 4, 1914, the issue of this war for the conscience of the world
was Belgium. Now, in the spring of 1916, the issue remains Belgium. For
eighteen months, our people were bidden by their representative at
Washington to feel no resentment against a hideous wrong. They were
taught to tame their human feelings by polished phrases of neutrality.
Because they lacked the proper outlet of expression, they grew
indifferent to a supreme injustice. They temporarily lost the capacity
to react powerfully against wrongdoing.
But today they are at last becoming alive to the iniquity of the
crushing of Belgium. Belgium is the battleground of the war on the
western front. But Belgium is also the battleground of the struggle in
our country between the forces of good and of evil. In the ranks of evil
are ranged all the pacifist sentimentalists, the cowards who possess the
gift of clothing their cowardice in soothing and attractive words, the
materialists whose souls have been rotted by exclusive devotion to the
things of the body, the sincere persons who are cursed with a deficient
sense of reality, and all who lack foresight or who are uninformed.
Against them stand the great mass of loyal Americans, who, when they see
the right, and receive moral leadership, show that they have in their
souls as much of the valor of righteousness as the men of 1860 and of
1776.
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