'' 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 man, white. We all want to
help one another, human beings are like that.
We all want to live by
each other's 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 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 men, 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 [now] 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 as cattle, 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 the love of humanity in your hearts. You don't hate --
only the unloved hate. Only the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers --
don't fight for slavery, fight for liberty.
In the seventeenth
chapter of Saint Luke it is written " the kingdom of God is within man "
-- not one man, nor a group of men -- but in all men -- in you, the
people.
You the people have the power, the power to create
machines, the power to create happiness. You the people have the power
to make life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful
adventure. Then in the name of democracy let's 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 you the future and old age and
security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power,
but they lie. They do not fulfil their promise, they never will.
Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people. Now let us fight
to fulfil that promise. Let us fight to free the world, to do away with
national barriers, 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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