Material loss can be made up through renewed labor, but the moral wrong which has been inflicted upon the conquered peoples, in the peace dictates, leaves a burning scar on the people's conscience.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Misery, mutilation, destruction, terror, starvation and death characterize the process of war and form a principal part of the product.
Here we are to remember that in consequence of our opinion that labor is the Father and active principle of wealth, as lands are the Mother, that the state by killing, mutilating, or imprisoning their members do withal punish themselves.
We moralize among ruins.
A hurtful act is the transference to others of the degradation which we bear in ourselves.
But the memory of war weighs undiminished upon the people's minds. That is because deeper than material wounds, moral wounds are smarting, inflicted by the so- called peace treaties.
The tragedy of bold, forthright, industrious people is that they act so continuously without much thinking, that it becomes dry and empty.
It is only through labor and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage, that we move on to better things.
We only labor to stuff the memory, and leave the conscience and the understanding unfurnished and void.
Humanity may endure the loss of everything; all its possessions may be turned away without infringing its true dignity - all but the possibility of improvement.
If you pursue good with labor, the labor passes away but the good remains; if you pursue evil with pleasure, the pleasure passes away and the evil remains.