A PLEA AGAINST HYSTERIA AND HATE
A Plea Against Hysteria and Hate Rev. Geo. F. Hunt Sees Danger in Policy of Vitriolic and Unreasoning Newspapers; Much of Present Feeling Is Born of Selfishness and Politics, Says Writer. Rev....
...Let us keep our sanity and maintain our balance and our justly lamed spirit of fair play...
...A successful German ending of the war will prolong for a brief spell such autocracy, but only for a brief spell...
...And hate and ill-will, fostered and nourished, not only ruins the heart that gives it lodgment, but in the end destroys the life hated...
...That some of our freedom of speech should be curtailed during war time is only natural and inevitable to social solidarity of action...
...Hate is always a sinister and murderous thing and it is always wrong...
...But the great danger, the greatest of all real dangers to our American democratic freedom, is a blind hysteria of fear that deprives men of their judgment, their reason and their good-will...
...The sinister forces of selfishness are always present in human nature and, in a time of excitement and confusion and strong emotion, find their golden opportunity for exploitation and self aggrandizement...
...Madison...
...IAM an American citizen by birth and by ancestry back to the Mayflower...
...There is a large body of perfectly sober Americans who do not believe in war at all, who think that the ends sought by patriotic warriors can be gained better by peaceful means...
...That system breeds flunkies who bow to officials, fear their "superiors" and lias well nigh killed all initiative and individualism among the German people...
...A democracy is a brotherhood of men who trust one another...
...Whoso fosters suspicion and hate is the enemy of democracy...
...It is madness for your editor or your orator in a time of high tension to be stirring up the fires of hate...
...Let's have an end of the bloody type of editorial stuff that appears with such wondrous similarity and regularity daily throughout the state...
...But, not only will the blood of pacifists be shed here, but there will be serious race riots and wholesale slaughter if this process of fanning of the fires of hate and suspicion goes on...
...The Gospel of Hate Just now nearly every newspaper and public orator are vying with one another to damn lovers of peace and to make the whole country hate them...
...It is easy enough to start a fire in dry grass and sometimes mighty hard to control it...
...Murder is born of hate and is the logical fruitage of ill-will...
...That the big part of the driving force back of this intolerance and this furious persecution is plain patriotism and honest fear no one questions...
...And I abhor the type of paternal autocracy that has characterized the German government for the past fifty years...
...There has been some danger from German spies and plots and from German money spent here to further German interests...
...I love my country and am an ardent lover of the type of democratic freedom that America has always stood for...
...of every American...
...Hate breeds hate, ill-will begets ill-will...
...There never can arise a situation in which a human being is morally justified in hating any of his fellow beings...
...Nor is it the pres ence here in America of millions of people of German blood, some of whom sympathize with the German side of this war...
...A democracy is founded on trust...
...However natural it may bo to hate a bad man, it is both unreasonable and morally wrong to bear toward that man ill-will...
...We should hate evil and all things base, but never hate human beings...
...But fear is a dangerous driving force, blind and unreasoning and awfully cruel...
...T hate the whole system...
...Kill a few pacifists here and see the disease spread like wildfire...
...And this is all wrong and the American people should be awake to it and not be indiscriminate in their judgments against every man who is charged with disloyalty...
...Let the pacifists alone and they sink out of sight and become perfectly harmless...
...Moreover patriotism is not the only driving force back of this hysteria of suspicion and intolerance...
...The gravest part of the danger involved in this state of high tension of feeling and fear lies in the fanning of the fires of hate...
...And some of the energy just now being spent in suspicious spying and petty persecution of perfectly innocent Americans is born of selfishness, old grudges, mean ambitions...
...A democracy is possible only where men trust one another...
...Hunt has long been recognised as one of the fearless of clergymen in Wisconsin...
...There is nothing more certain, taught by all history, than that persecution of heresy spreads tile heresy...
...There is never a human being so low but there is some good in him...
...And whatever be the outcome of this war, whether Germany or the allies win, autocracy and paternalism are certainly doomed...
...He is the pastor of Christ Presbyterian church...
...We believe that the statement is worthy of circulation at this time.— Editor's Note...
...Suspicion and hate are the enemies of democracy...
...Human nature here in Wisconsin is just like human nature everywhere else, it is highly explosive stuff...
...And that irresponsible autocracy, burning up with selfish ambition to rule the world, has brought the world just now to the brink of hell...
...The type of vitriolic hate that breathes from many editorial pages against these perfectly sane and sincere and law-abiding Americans is quite calculated eventually to result in the killing of some of them...
...German officialdom tried to perpetuate their strangle hold on the German people by pretending that all the world was attacking them...
...It will not be Germans who will start such trouble, but hot-headed Americans whose hate has been unduly inflamed...
...It is a system of police espionage that distrusts every citizen and watches him with utmost vigilance and compels him to bow to authorily at every turn of his carefully supervised life...
...And just now there is being systematically nourished in American hearts a flaming fire of hate—hate for the Germans, hate for German-Americans, hate for pacifists, hate for socialists, and hate for all and everybody who refuses to shout himself black in the face three times a day to prove his loyalty...
...Let us be sane, reasoning beings, and lovers of our kind and we will be all the more loyal Americans...
...This war is going to destroy k. It was doomed before the war began, was disintegrating under the steady progress of German liberalism, and was one of the causes of the war...
...Fears Blind Hysteria Having said this, permit me to say that, In my judgment, the great danger to America just now is not the German military power...
...George E. Hunt is the pastor of the largest church in...
...He recent ID issued a statement asking for sanity and reason in the prcsent crisis...
...That is what is going to happen unless these frantic editors and orators qualify and tone down some of their fiery utterances The folly of such methods alone condemns them...
...Both political and industrial democracy are as certain to Bway the future of mankind as that science will give to man the mastery of the earth...
...This blind fury of fear is just now driving certain sections of our American peoplo into (he madness of a wellnigh universal suspicion of their fellows and a series of persecutions that arc in direct violation of the constitutional right...
...Petty politics, masquerading as lofty patriotism, taking advantage of the sensitive state of the public mind, is attacking falsely and cruelly wronging the lives of perfectly loyal Americans...
...Some things are being done in the sacred name of patriotism which are base and sinister...
...Indeed, that is just the talk one hears: "Take them out and shoot them...
Vol. 9 • September 1917 • No. 9
