“You bought the war. Were you an interventionist?<\/p>\n
Then you bought it because you knew it was the price of freedom.<\/p>\n
Were you an isolationist? Then you bought it because you wouldn’t<\/p>\n
pay the lesser price of stopping the first aggressions. Did you vote?<\/p>\n
For whom? For men who went to Washington and revealed that<\/p>\n
they didn’t know anything about armies or navies or nations or<\/p>\n
industry? If you did, you were buying the war–this one–the<\/p>\n
expensive one. Did you do nothing? Not even vote? Then you<\/p>\n
bought more of this war than anybody else because this is the<\/p>\n
war of men who wanted the world and it was made possible by the<\/p>\n
men who wanted no part of anything–no part of the vigilance that<\/p>\n
maintains liberty–no part of the responsibility for all that means<\/p>\n
freedom for each–no cost and no trouble.<\/p>\n
War is not a natural catastrophe like an earthquake. Men make<\/p>\n
war. They begin its manufacture during peacetime with harsh<\/p>\n
envies and schemes to exploit the irresponsibility of others. The last<\/p>\n
peace, during which this war was fomented, held its share of injus-<\/p>\n
tices; far beyond that, it was a queasy slough of irresponsibility,<\/p>\n
default, and disclaimer.<\/p>\n
You are buying the next peace with this war. Are you trying to<\/p>\n
purchase a replica of the peace that failed? And, if you are not,<\/p>\n
have you studied why it failed–why America failed–why you<\/p>\n
failed? In that study are the reasons for which we fight and the<\/p>\n
explanations of why we failed. If you search them out and under-<\/p>\n
stand them you will be able and ready to pay the cost of enduring<\/p>\n
peace. For peace, like war, is also the work of the people. You.”<\/p>\n
Philip Wylie.<\/p>\n
Flyleaf statement excerpted from “Generation of Vipers”[war edition],<\/p>\n
published by\u00a0 Farrar and Rinehart, Inc. New York, Toronto, 1942.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
“You bought the war. Were you an interventionist? Then you bought it because you knew it was the price of freedom. Were you an isolationist? Then you bought it because you wouldn’t pay the lesser price of stopping the first aggressions. Did you vote? For whom? For men who went to Washington and revealed that … Continue reading “Wylie”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1134","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewalrussaid.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewalrussaid.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewalrussaid.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewalrussaid.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewalrussaid.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1134"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thewalrussaid.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1134\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1205,"href":"https:\/\/thewalrussaid.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1134\/revisions\/1205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewalrussaid.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}