Article August 28, 1943 Issue

Signs of the Times

"Wherein dwelleth mercy"

with contributions from Walter Russell Bowie, L. B. Ashby, John Walter Houck, Charles C. Merrill

Walter Russell Bowie
The New York Times Magazine

The truth is that wars are not won by dosing people up with a lot of synthetic hatred. They can be effectively lost that way, as Hitler will find out. This nation had better take its chance of winning, not by glandular virus, but by clear thinking, positive purpose, and intelligently disciplined will.

After the war, then what? Will the overthrow of Hitler and the Japanese war lords amount to anything? Will the accomplishment of that, and only that, be worth this war's horrible cost? Of course not. Their overthrow would at best do no more than clear the ground— clear the ground upon which slowly we may begin to shape the fabric of a world order conceived and built according to those principles of justice and human consideration which alone could make it fit to last. That kind of world cannot be created by men still stupid and truculent with the hangovers of deliberate hating. It will require men whose souls have been big enough to keep sober in a maddened time.

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