Article January 28, 1922 Issue

Signs of the Times

with contributions from Frank C. Doan, Henry Cabot Lodge, Percy Dearmer

[From "After Disarmament, What?" by Frank C. Doan, in Unity, Abraham Lincoln Center, Chicago, Illinois]

The most impressive thing to me, and the happiest omen, about the Conference at Washington on the Limitation of Armament is the amazing unanimity of the public mind in regard to the object itself of the Conference. It is not too much to say that the eyes of all the peoples of the earth to-day are turned toward Washington with anxious hope and eager expectation. These last days I have been searching back over past history for precedents; but nowhere do I find anything comparable to the present united movement of the peoples of the earth toward peace and good will. There have been great periods in the past, great and stirring times, times when a whole nation has been united in the defense of its borders and its liberties, as in the Wars of the Netherlands; periods when a whole class of people has been united against another class, as in the French Revolution; periods when men of autocratic power have combined to oppress and exploit the common peoples, as in the case of all the ancient autocracies from Rome to Russia; times when great masses of people of a certain religious enthusiasm have united in religious wars against whole masses of people of a different religious persuasion, as in the Great Protestant Reformation; and times when men of a military class have united in pressing their Bismarckian methods of culture on an unwilling civilian population, as in the case of Germany of yesterday. But never, so far as I can see, never in all history will you find all men, men of all classes and nations and races and of every conceivable political and religious opinion, united as they are to-day in the great cause of universal liberty and peace and good will.

Take our own country, for example. See how men and women of widely differing opinions and ideals are united to-day as never they have been before in the history of our American commonwealth. Women of social vision like Jane Addams, men of science like David Starr Jordan, men of military training and conviction like General Pershing, men of business sagacity like Otto Kahn, men of labor sympathies like Samuel Gompers and Eugene Debs—behold them all, forgetting their social and political and religious antagonisms of yesterday, united to-day in the one common hope, yea, the one common demand, for a fruitful outcome of the approaching Conference.

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