From 1918 on, trade unionists were to express from the platforms of their congresses the workers' desire for peace through a rational organization of the world.
In America most orthodox Christians become defensive or testy when they are asked even to break into a sweat. Most of our efforts up until now have been more symbolic than anything else. We are great at holding conventions, gathering for strategy meetings and seminars, holding congresses on evangelism. But where are the people to run our own antidefamation league?
All Congresses and Parliaments have a kindly feeling for idiots, and a compassion for them, on account of personal experience and heredity.
Peace congresses often start by dealing with some of the less important questions in excessive detail, so at the end there is no time to discuss the most important problems.
Perhaps my dynamite plants will put an end to war sooner than your [pacifist] congresses. On the day two army corps can annihilate each other in one second all civilized nations will recoil from war in horror.
For twelve successive Congresses we have appeared before committees of the two Houses making this plea, that the underlying principle of our Government, the right of consent, shall have practical application to the other half of people. Such a little simple thing we have been asking for a quarter of a century. For over forty years, longer than the children of Israel wandered through the wilderness, we have been begging and praying and pleading for this act of justice. We shall some day be heeded.
The nation is faced with one of the most corporate-orientated anti-consumer Congresses in our history.
