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A World League to Enforce Peace

- William Howard Taft

We are not peace-at-any-price men, because we do not think we have reached the time when a plan based on the complete abolition of war is impracticable. So long as nations partake of the frailties of men who compose them, war is a possibility, and that possibility should not be ignored in any League of Peace that is to be useful. We do not think it necessary to call peace-at-any-price men cowards or apply other epithets to them. We have known in history the most noble characters who adhered to such a view and yet whose physical and moral courage is a heritage of mankind.
To those who differ with us in our view of the necessity for this feature of possible force in our plan, we say we respect your attitude. We admit your claim to sincere patriotism to be as just as ours. We do not ascribe your desire to avoid war to be a fear of death to yourselves or your sons; but rather to your sense of the horrors, injustice, and ineffectiveness of settling any international issue by such a brutal arbitrament.

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