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290
THE CRISIS

murdered it, till each baby lay pale, limp and dead.
(Nay, shrink not, my children; horrible as the tale may be, the truth is worse and you must know it.)
When War was loose. Then six million human beings left their fields of golden grain and the busy hum of their factories and taking their own children for weapons dashed them against the trees and the lampposts and the churches and wallowed and gasped in their blood!
Come, all my father's children and hear how beyond the blue mists of the Everlasting Sea, the mothers mad with hunger, grief and pain, are fronting with blood-stained heavens with bared and haunted breasts and are shrieking:
"Why?"
"Why?"
Their shriek is the booming of guns, and the booming of cannon is the shriek of mothers.
And you must answer, Children of Peace, you must answer!
You must cry: "There is no why!"
"The cause of War is Preparation for War."
"The cause of Preparation for War is the Hatred and Despising of Men, you and my Brothers."
"War is murder in a red coat."
"War is raped mothers and bleeding fathers and strangled children."
"War is Death, Hate, Hunger and Pain!"
"Hell is War!"
And when you believe this with all you little hearts;
And when you cry it across the seas and across the years with all your little voices—
Then shall the mothers of all dead children hear;
Then shall the Sisters of all dead Brothers hear; then shall the Daughters of all dead Fathers hear; then shall the Women rise and say:
"War is done."
"Henceforward and forever there shall be no organized murder of men,for the children we bear shall be the Children of Peace, else there shall be no children."
Amen!
But cry, little children, cry and cry loud and soon, for until you and the Mothers speak, the men of the world bend stupid and crazed beneath the burden of hate and death. Behold, this old and awful world is but on slaughter-pen, one tale of innocent blood and senseless hate and strife.

[[image: girl in white dress, hair-bow, and shoes]]
GEORGIA

Look yonder! In the gloomy forest all is still, save here a red an flickering flame and there a last trembling sob. Only one living thing passe across the night: a horse—a gaunt, sweating horse, with bloody nostrils, great pain-struck eyes, and bowels trailing on the earth. He hears his Emperor bugling "Victory!" to the King. Turning he staggers toward him and whimpers as he goes.

NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED PEOPLE

[[image: toddler holding left foot]]

You read THE CRISIS, the organ of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Are you a member of the Association? 
The bogey of race prejudice, again brought to the fore by those who seek to disguise the real issues of the ghastly war now raging and to justify its awful carnage, we are pledged to defy. It is our constant experience to deal with its hideous effects. Within the last month lynchings have occurred within our borders which equal in barbarism any of the atrocities which are reported from the theatre of war in Europe. Newspapers print account of four such crimes in Louisiana alone during the month of August.
Terrible as it is, the war will probably in the end do much to explode the "might makes right" tradition, to make tangible democratic ideals, and to lead men of different races to a mutual understanding of human brotherhood. It may mean that at last the hour for the darker peoples has come, that they are to have their opportunity for full self expression for which they have waited in patience so long.
In peace of war, ours is the only Association in the world pledged to fight race prejudice. Organized at the time the Springfield riots stirred the country, it has made a most honorable record in its five years' struggle to revive the spirit of Lincoln and Lovejoy. The work of the new Abolition is your work—the greatest work of the century. "Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide." This is your moment. Join us. Send you dollar to-day.