Armistice Day Irony

Rabbi William Margolis, Temple Ohab Zedek, 118 West Ninety-fifth street:

“To achieve faith and understanding among nations, international law must be augmented by a strongly developed foundation of international morality! Of course it is impossible to speak of peace, faith and understanding with such national spokesmen as Hitler, whose whole language is composed of two words, ‘blood and iron,’ and whose jealous, grasping ambitions threaten to dot the world again with military posts. What intelligent leader can expect the sanctity of pledges or the milk of human sympathy and feeling from this modern Attila whose hordes harbor a hotbed of hatred in what was once a country of culture and achievement. Peace in Europe, or in any civilized section of the world, is unthinkable whilst the mad German unpoliced dog is at large. Thus France mobolizes at the Saar Valley, Italy watches the Austrian borders, while other nations wait uneasily at home. There can be no respect for international law while the demoralizing influence of selfish supernationalism makes of law and order a mockery. The blinding storm of prejudice still raging in Hitlerland is making men forget the wartime sights of desolation and the sounds of woe—the reeking battlefield and the reign of ghastly death. Instead of turning to the cultivation of the arts of peace, they are turning, fearfully, sneakingly, mistrustingly, to brighten their arms and to cram their magazines with powder! Armistice Day, forsooth!”