The supreme world crisis is on. We have entered the War in the purest spirit of democracy. We state frankly in advance that we want no indemnity, no extension of territory. We war with no people, except as that people identifies itself with aggressive autocracy and imperialism, imperilling our safety, as of all democracies, and seeking to ride tyrannically and unjustly over the rights and liberties of other peoples. Thus we enter the War solely for the cause of democracy and humanity.
The hour of sacrifice has struck for the American people: will it rise to the test? When one considers the characteristics of our surface life for recent decades—the devotion to money-getting, the rapid increase of senseless and debauching luxury, the reckless frivolity, the unthinking haste and selfish pleasure-seeking—one questions. Underneath, however, is a tremendous latent idealism. We are young, enthusiastic, capable of glorious consecration. Cynical disillusionment is all upon the surface —the cult of the clique of cleverness, uprooted from the soil of common life and the deeps of the eternal verities. Beneath in the great mass of the people is profound faith in life, deep trust in the ideal, belief in the great future of humanity. Democracy will justify itself. We shall rise to the test; but how we need to hear and heed the call!
"Awake America" means Americans awake! For in democracy the individual is the soul. On each person rests the responsibility. Let us accept the bitter burden and meet the supreme test, giving time, money, service, life and those we love better than life, for the sake of the safer, freer, nobler world that is to be. Since we stood apart so long and entered the horrible devastation so late, it is our privilege to do all we can to save the spiritual heritage of humanity, to keep our hearts clean from the corrosive acid of national and racial hatred, to do all in our power to remove it from the breasts of others. Injustice in high places is possible only because there is injustice in the hearts of men. To overthrow tyranny is but the initial step of emancipation: unless the tyrant hate in the heart is dethroned, the external tyrant, in some form of social injustice will surely return. He who conquers hate and the lust for revenge in his own breast is spiritually free and master of the tyrant that wrongs him. Thus it is our privilege and duty to hate no one; but to hate injustice, greed, tyranny, aggressive selfishness, the wicked ambitions of autocratic imperialism, to resist and help to overthrow them, and so do our part in bringing in the free brotherhood of the nations and peoples in one humanity, that will be the dawn of the longed-for era of universal and permanent peace for mankind.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Soul of Democracy, by Edward Howard Griggs