' *''• .'»■-«• «( i *rj'.'i ' J ■• T ‘ -i' ■ , >•
THE CADUCEUS
NOT ALTRUISM
“WE FIGHT TO SAVE OURSELVES”
STATES RECORD.
America _ is fighting as one would
battle against a mad man and will
not quit until the issue of conquest
is forever settled, is the attitude of
the daily bulletin of The Manufac
turer’s Record, which attacks the
theory that we are fighting because
of altruism, in the following readable
article which was brought to the
attention of The Caduceus by Lieut
C. F. Harvey, Jr., Q. M. C.
“No people ever went to war in a
more altruistic spirit,” is a statement
by Rev. J. B. Gambrell, one of the
foremost religious leaders of the
South, with which we decidedly take
issue. Dr. Gambrell is wholly wrong.
This country went to war from the
selfish motive of saving itself from
destruction; it went to war from ex
actly the same reason, and no other,
that a man tries to shoot the mur-
derer or the burglar and the out-
rager trying to break ino his house
and destroy his family.
THIS
GATESS^^TIRE
RAN
23.000 MILES CONTINUOUS SERVICE
WITHOUT BEING REMOVED FROM THE
RIM. THIS HALF SOLE TIRE WAS USED
ON A CAR OWNED BY RODERICK
HARDWARE CO„ DALLAS. TEXAS
COST HALF AS MUCH
INTERNATIONAL RUBBER SALES CO.
404 SOUTH IRVON SIREfT
CHARLOTTE, N. C.
That was our position as a na
tion.
Oh, no; we did not go into this
war from any altruistic motive, and
against us history, with its cold and
unerring decision, will record the fact
that while our neighbors were being
destroyed while the greatest immoral-
itey human history running rampant,
we stood aloof and said, “It is none
of our business.”
We did not even protest against
Germany’s black crimes. We gave no,
we did not give; he gave himself—the
man whose tremendous organizing
power saved Belgium from starva
tion, but we individually and as a na
tion contributed only about $30,000,-
000 of money to succor Belgium
while England and France, despite
their tremendous losses and fearful
woe, contributed ten times as much.
France, one of the sublimest figures
in all human history, a nation which
was civilized and Qhristionized and a
leader hundreds yes a thousand years
and more before America was discov
ered; France, wos being trampled to
death. The friend who had befriended
us in the time of contest, the friend
r who had always honored and loved
us, met a doom as great as that of Bel
gium. Millions of barbarians over its
fair fields and its glorious cities
wrought ruin such as civilization had
never known. They destroyed woman
hood _ and childhood with the same
gloating glee with which they destroy
ed cathedrals and churches and the
very fruit trees of the land, and
France, our old-time friend, must have
stood aghast as it looked in vain for
help from one it had helped in times
past.
Well might France ask the question
\yhich a French officer put to Dr. Hil-
lis, when he said; “How could Ameri
ca for two years leave the women and
children of France in hell?”
England, the great civilizing and
Christianizing power of the world un
der whose fiag are found law and or
der wherever it floats, on land and
sea; England, the land of Shakespeare
and Milton, and Bunyon and Tenni-
son; the land dear to America by a
thousand ties of kinship, threw into
me great fight to save Belgium and
France millions and millions of the
very flower of life; and the English
army, like the armies of France and
Belgium and Italy, and the English
battle fleet stood between us and the
hell of German domination, and we as
behind those armies and
that battle fleet and saved our own
precious hides.
Oh, no; it was no altruistic senti
ment which sent us into the war.
Not until we definitely learned that
England and France could no longer
stay the onrush of barbarism, not un-
til we knew that those who had sacri
ficed millions of lives and billions of
treasure to save civilization could no
longer hold out without help, and not
downfall
meant the immediate overwhelming
destruction of this country, did we as
a nation enter the war.
Altruism! Let us forever hide our
hea,ds in shame that we had no al
truism; that we stayed out of the war
possibly could do
so without being destroyed, and that
when we entered it we entered it only
because we knew that our destruction
was in the near future unless on the
battlefields we could help those who
had fought for three years to keep on
fighting and save themselves.
We did not enter the war to save
Belgium nor to save England nor to
save France nor to save Italy.
If Germany had not attacked us, if it
had not sunk our ships and murdered
our people, if it had left us unharm
ed, would we have gone to war in a
spirit of altruism to save England and
Prance and Italy and Belgium? Not a
bR of it, and every man who talks
about altruism knows it.
We said that we were not our broth
er s keeper, and we glorified in the
campaign slogan “He kept us out of
war. Did that indicate altruism?
Altruism! When a man sees his
neighbor’s family murdered without
going to their rescue and then when
the murders and outragers turn on
his family and throw some of his
children to the sharks, outrage others
and try to murder his wife, is it al
truism that makes him fight when thus
forced into a corner? There is just as
much altruism in our being in this
war as there would be in the man who
finally roused himself against the
murderers and outragers of his own
family.
We are fighting a war for self- pres
ervation, a war against the murder
ers of our own people, a war against
a nation of murderers and looters
who sought to sti» up Mexico and Ja
pan to fight us, whose spies blew up
our factories, killed our people,
bought our newspapers for the pur
pose of upholding their crimes, lied
to our government, sought to stir up
race riots here and to conquer Ameri
ca by the power of money, of pro-
German deviltries in one form or an
other, seduced men and women from
the paths of rectitude to become Ger
many’s willing tools to fill the land
with lies against our nation.
Altruism! We had none of it in en
tering the war.
In the presence of our allies,! who
so gloriously for three long years en
dured the agony of fighting our battle,
we should stand with uncovered heads
and thank God that they had the cour
age the manhood to fight, while we
stood by and reaped enormous profits
from selling them foodstuffs and muni
tions at prices which were staggering
ly profitable to our country.
“No people ever went to war in a
more altrustic spirit” is wrong. It is
erroneous teachings. It saps the moral
stamina of the nation, it praises- oursel
ves when we do not deserve it. Rather
should the word go forth from the pul
pit and from the press and from the
public men that we stood aside as
long as'it was possible and that we
permitted our neighbors to be murder
ed, unwilling to come to, their rescue
and assume our responsibility for the
maintenance of civilization and Chris
tianity throughout the earth. Then
would we in a spirit of humanity un
derstand why we must now sacrifice
as England and Prance and Belgium
pd Italy and Serbia'have sacrificed
in men and in money.
—(Dally Bulletin Manufacturers
Record.)