Do Not Do It

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Sep 10, 1912

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 39, No. 35.

(Contributed)

To militarize our schools would be a step backward and downward. It would create thousands of new places for military officers to be fed at governmental expense, and it would cripple the nation. It would swell the business of the men who manufacture guns and powder and bullets, but it would put an increased burden on the man who pays taxes. It would put a new glamour on army and navy, but it would retard the day when the whole world is to bow at the feet of the Prince of Peace. Europe has tried military drill, and look at it! Let us try something else. Europe puts a soldier on the back of every peasant. The soldier has a fine chest, but the back of the peasant is bent. This is the land of democracy, the land of the people, the land in which every man has the right to an upright carriage and an unfettered life. Let us be careful how we increase the number of men who, producing nothing themselves, sit daily at the government's tables; and let us think twice before we decide to drill the rising generation in the tactics of a game which one of the greatest military captains of all time declared to be the trade of barbarians.