Tredyffrin Easttown Historical Society
History Quarterly Digital Archives

Source: 1942 Volume 5 Number 1, Page 2

Editorial

Page 2

The regimentation of the physical, mental, and spiritual entities of a people to the will of a single mind, however efficient to accomplish a set and determined purpose, cannot result in the lasting good or happiness of the world.

To designate the present dictators and war lords by their modern self-appointments does not conceal their emulation of the cruel tyrants of ancient times, nor the fact that the people have merely exchanged the absolutism of bygone monarchies for equally absolute dictatorships.

History invariably repeats itself. We can draw the deadly parallel of the Hitler blitzkrieg, or the unprovoked attacks of the Japanese, with the destructive raids of Genghis Khan, who, during 1206-1221, conquered unprepared Northern China and Central Asia, leaving death, devastation, and untold misery in his wake.

Since the French and Indian war of nearly two hundred years ago, America has not fought a war in which innocent men, women, and children have been slaughtered indiscriminately, and private property destroyed by the enemy without regard to the requirements of military expediency. Our enemies have returned to the barbarity of ancient period. They have turned the bounty of God into the instruments of hell. Might for a time may triumph over right, but in the end it is a losing game. The time has come when their ruthlessness must be met with a firm determination to stamp out these perfidious foes in the only way they can be made to understand.

These are extraordinary times, and demand extraordinary measures, and if in the divine economy of nature it is meant that the United States of America shall live as a beacon to freedom and Christian charity (and who can doubt it?), then a great patriot must appear above the welter of politics and bureaucracy. A man supreme in civic, military, or naval capacity, one who will never again let us forget that "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty".