Consider World Peace
Thomas J. Watson Sr.'s Desire for Peace |
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Published August 26, 2021
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Considering World Peace
Thomas J. Watson Sr., THINK Magazine, February 1939
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Seventy-five years ago on the battlefield of Gettysburg, with the most sanguinary of wars still raging, Abraham Lincoln expressed the immortal spirit of this nation when he declared: "We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain".
Issues of transcendental importance to all the states of the Union, and to much of the world outside, divided the North and South in that war; yet, at its conclusion, those words of Lincoln became a consecrated utterance for victors and vanquished alike. Ever since that time the people of the United States of America—true to the memories of their dead—have done their utmost to avoid war and to help other nations prevent war. |
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Twenty-five years ago there began a World War [World War I] in which some 23,000,000 men lost their lives and a like number of human beings were maimed or injured. The cost in money of that war to date has been more than 337,000,000,000 dollars. What if the nations of the world had foregathered to appraise the disastrous results of that war before it started rather than after it ended! When the "war to end wars" was over that surely was the determination of civilized peoples everywhere. Like Lincoln their one thought was: "We hereby resolve that those who have died shall not have died in vain." Lincoln with his inspired words at Gettysburg on November 19, 1863 was not merely the voice of the people of a comparatively young republic; he was the voice of the world denouncing war.
Today these words of his are a clarion-call to the people of every nation. Did those millions of men who perished for civilization give their lives in vain? Are those millions who constitute the dreadful list of maimed and wounded to count for nothing in the world of tomorrow? Lincoln the Great Emancipator, Lincoln the great humanist gave us our answer.
Let us begin right now—we the world's people—to pay our debt to the dead.
Today these words of his are a clarion-call to the people of every nation. Did those millions of men who perished for civilization give their lives in vain? Are those millions who constitute the dreadful list of maimed and wounded to count for nothing in the world of tomorrow? Lincoln the Great Emancipator, Lincoln the great humanist gave us our answer.
Let us begin right now—we the world's people—to pay our debt to the dead.
Thomas J. Watson Sr., "Considering World Peace"