Speech of Senator Harry S. Truman to Public School Children at Independence, Missouri, "Teaching Peace

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TEACHING REAGE C OP, Armistice Day is a celebration of the ending of the Great World War eighteen years ago--a Wer brought about by envy, greed and misunderstanding among the great European powers. This great country of ours became involved in an effort to help the French and English Democracies against the Imperial Governments of Germany and Austria, and to protect its own honor. Peace between nations is just like peace between individuals. When nations really want peace, peace and tran- quillity will reign; but when the nations become avaricious and over-bearing, lose a sense of honor and forget humanity and their honorable agreements, then comes war and wholesale murder, along with untold suffering. We all want peace. No one who has seen war wants to see it or take part in it again. War is not necessary to the settlement of disagreements between nations and peoples, any more than mob violence is necessary to settle individual mis- understandings. Fighting instinct seems to have been natural to man from the beginning. Savages used clubs to take what they wanted, and to keep it. As man became more sivilized, he devised ways to avoid personal violence in the settlement of disputes. He created law and machinery to make it work. But in order to effectually have individual peace, man had to have a police force to maintain it. He set up courts to hear grievances be- tween man and man, and the decisions of the courts are enforced to ADMIN us