THE OBSERVANCE OF PEACE DAY
Buisson, M. Ferdinand
The Observance of Peace Day By M. FERDINAND BUISSON, PARIS, FRANCE Depute de Paris: Ancien Directeur de l'Enseignement Primaire; President de la Commission de l'Enseignement a la Chambre des...
...TO SET ASIDE one day in the year in our schools as the holiday of humanity, placing it above our national days, would mark a new chapter in public education...
...but on this day we should anticipate the future...
...We shall no longer witness the duel between capital and labor, since there will be no longer men who own without working, nor men who work without being owners...
...when nations, as well as individuals, will repudiate force and brutality as the supreme means of settling their differences...
...Let Peace Day shine once a year, among all classes of society...
...President de la Commission de l'Enseignement a la Chambre des Deputies...
...The pages of that chapter are as yet a blank which time will fill and illuminate...
...Children, you must all prepare for it, as you are the ones who will be called upon to work out these problems...
...If you wish to plough straight and deep, hitch your plow to a star...
...distant dreams and idle fancies...
...The whole year is consecrated, as it ought to be, to the promotion of love of country, to teaching our duties toward our country, to the extent even of sacrificing ourselves for her...
...We shall see in the distance a society where civil and economic wars, as well as all other wars, shall have disappeared...
...During the entire year we study the laws which regulate their relations, that is to say, their conflicts...
...Perhaps, but such dreams are an inherent part of our love for life, and such chimeras are indispensable to the growth of man...
...This time has not yet come...
...Such progress does not require the genius of an Archimedes or a Newton, but must spring up irresistibly from the conscience of the young generation, and from the universal will of men, independent of races, classes, and tongues...
...Dreams, they say...
...To hasten its coming, we might ask the youth to think and speak about it at least once a year...
...From now on, we can tell our children—we must tell them—that the time is near when men will work out the miracle of learning how to live as men ought to live...
...On this special day, however, it is in order not to forget our country, but to see it transfigured in the future, to see it lead in the movement which fraternally binds one nation to all others, making a sort of superior country, the federation of the United States of the Civilized World...
...Let it shine one day in the year among all nations...
...We may dream of a social peace accompanying international peace, of the end of the struggle of classes, through the disappearance of classes...
Vol. 5 • May 1913 • No. 19
