A POISONED WORLD 



459 



throughout the country, and prepared not 

 only a comfort bag, but a comfort bag 

 containing each and every one of those 

 articles for each man in the division. 



We arranged a Christmas tree and had 

 various Christmas celebrations at the 

 various camps, and those presents were 

 distributed. 



MAKE THE SOLDIERS FEEE YOU'RE BACK OF 

 THEM 



The point I wish to make is that those 

 things cause the soldier to remember that 

 the people at home are behind him. You 

 do not know how much that is going to 

 mean to us who are going abroad. You 

 do not know how much that means to 

 any soldier who is over there carrying 

 the flag for his country. That is the 

 point which should be uppermost in the 

 minds of those who are working for the 

 soldier. 



The great work, however, for this Red 

 Cross is to help our allies. As I under- 

 stand it, the people in France need sup- 

 plies of all kinds. Therefore, it is our 

 first duty to help them rehabilitate them- 

 selves. 



We must help their orphans and their 

 widows. We must help put them in a 

 position to produce. We must help them 



in every way to relieve the French nation 

 from the drain upon it which will, in 

 turn, be a drain upon its military re- 

 sources. 



Our people have not begun to realize 

 that we are in this great war. It is all 

 very well to write newspaper editorials 

 about it and to talk about it on the plat- 

 form ; but it has not yet been impressed 

 upon the people everywhere. 



I have just come from a county where 

 they talk to you and say, "Oh, well, we 

 haven't lost anybody ; none of our vessels 

 has been destroyed, and we do not really 

 feel that we are at war." 



I put this question to all such men : 

 "Now that we are in this war, do you 

 realize that we must take the place of 

 every man that is killed among the Allies, 

 that we must support the widows and 

 orphans? If we do not, who will do it?" 



The representatives of business inter- 

 ests are the men to start this enterprise 

 among our people and bring them to a 

 full realization of the very grave serious- 

 ness of this war, to make them feel that 

 we are in this war to win, and the prob- 

 ability is that our entering this war is 

 going to be the deciding factor, and that 

 the burden of the success is going to rest 

 upon the United States. 



A POISONED WORLD 



By William Howard Taft 



Ex-President of the United States 



A REYIEW of the dreadful horror 

 /\ of this war brings back to one the 

 X j^ attitude of mind of many good 

 people in the outset of the war, who wrote 

 communications and expressed themselves 

 orally to the effect that this had shaken 

 their faith in the existence of a God ; that 

 it could not be that a good God would 

 permit the horror and agony of spirit of 

 his children such as we saw before our 

 eyes. 



The war goes on. There has, it seems 

 to me, developed in the war some evi- 

 dence of the divine plan of eliminating 



from the family of nations a conspiracy 

 to put the world under the heel of a ruth- 

 less philosophy of military force to take 

 away the liberty of mankind. 



If you will study the history of Ger- 

 many for the last half century, you will 

 see that conspiracy disclosing itself more 

 and more clearly. 



The doctrine preached openly in the 

 philosophy of that country was that there 

 is no international morality ; that there is 

 no rule by which a nation may be gov- 

 erned except that of self-preservation, as 

 it is called, which means self -exploitation 



