Jasper County Democrat, Volume 21, Number 78, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 December 1918 — WILSON WORLD'S HOPE [ARTICLE]

WILSON WORLD'S HOPE

Zurich, Dec. 26.-—The sensation of the day throughout Switzerland is an open letter by Romain Rolland to President Wilson. Rolland, author of the famous “Jean Christophe” for which he received the grand prix of the French academy in 1913, has been living in Switzerland since the early part of the war, a “voluntary exile,” as he calls 'himself. The celebrated French novelist who said “Everything that is unjust is. my enemy; wherever Liberty is violated, there is my country,” addressed his open letter to the American president to the Paris socialist newspaper La Populaire, but so far as is known here no news of it, if the letter was 'passed by the French censor for publication in the Paris paper, has yet been sent to America. Here is the text: Mr. Eresiderit: " The peoples are breaking their chains. The hour that you foresaw, the hour which you willed, has struck. May it not have struck in vain.’ From one end of Europe to the other there is rising among the nations the will to reconquer the determination of their destinies and to unite for the* sake of a regenerated Europe. Beyond their political boundaries their hands are groping, groping for the clasp of brotherhood. But between them always are the yawning precipices and misunderstandings. Over this abyss a bridge must be built.

The chains of the ancient fatalism must be broken; this fatalism which forces the nations into national war, and which for centuries has allowed them to leap at each other’s throat, blindly, into mutual destruction. But the peoples cannot free themselves alone. They are calling for help. To whom shall they turn? You alone, Mr. President, hold a position of universal moral authority among all those who are now jburdened with the terrible honor inf guiding the policies of the nations. Respond to the call of these pathetic hopes. Take both hands that are stretched out toward you into your own. Help the peoples to re-unite. Help these peoples who are groping to find their way; help them found a new charter of freedom and unity, the principles of

which they are seeking passionately, but amid confusion. Mark well, Mr. President, the fact that Europe threatens to fall prey to the spheres of hell! The peoples in all countries have little confidence In the governing classes. You are In this hour the one lone man who can speak to and be heard by the one as well as the other—the masses and the bourgeoisies of ail nations. You are the only one who today (who knows If tomorrow may not be too late?) can act as the mediator between them. Heir of Washington, of Abraham Lincoln, take In your hand the cause, not of one party, - not of one nation, but of all! Open the doors of the congress of humanity to the representatives "of the peoples of the earth! Preside at that congress with the full weight of the authority which your high moral conscience and the mighty future of America assure you. Speak, speak to them all! The world is hungry for a voice which reaches beyond the boundaries of nations and classes. Be the arbiter of the free peoples. And may the future greet you with the name ''Conciliator.”