| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Pivot of Civilization by Margaret Sanger: world reveal a curious contradiction in this respect. Human life is
held sacred, as a general Christian principle, until war is declared,
when humanity indulges in a universal debauch of bloodshed and
barbarism, inventing poison gases and every type of diabolic
suggestion to facilitate killing and starvation. Blockades are
enforced to weaken and starve civilian populations--women and
children. This accomplished, the pendulum of mob passion swings back
to the opposite extreme, and the compensatory emotions express
themselves in hysterical fashion. Philanthropy and charity are then
unleashed. We begin to hold human life sacred again. We try to save
the lives of the people we formerly sought to weaken by devastation,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Complete Poems of Longfellow by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Evolves in its progress, rank and rife.
Consult the dead upon things that were,
But the living only on things that are.
Have you done this, by the appliance
And aid of doctors?
PRINCE HENRY.
Ay, whole schools
Of doctors, with their learned rules;
But the case is quite beyond their science.
Even the doctors of Salern
Send me back word they can discern
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis: "What the hell would I do that for? I've got a bar of my own," but this did
not appear in the public prints.
The League was of value to the American Legion at a time when certain of the
lesser and looser newspapers were criticizing that organization of veterans of
the Great War. One evening a number of young men raided the Zenith Socialist
Headquarters, burned its records, beat the office staff, and agreeably dumped
desks out of the window. All of the newspapers save the Advocate-Times and the
Evening Advocate attributed this valuable but perhaps hasty direct-action to
the American Legion. Then a flying squadron from the Good Citizens' League
called on the unfair papers and explained that no ex-soldier could possibly do
such a thing, and the editors saw the light, and retained their advertising.
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