Salt Lake City, Utah, Wednesday Morning, November 11, 1942 Armistice Anniversary With Its Treaty Torn Up Twenty four years ago the armistice was signed near Paris. The first modern attempt of autocratic authority to recover lost prestige and reassert its traditional right to rule mankind had failed. Soldiers of the central powers were holding high their empty hands and crying kamerad. Imperial officers were clamoring for any sort of agreement to insure cessation of hostilities. An abdicating kaiser was kicking up the dust on his flight to a sanctuary in Holland. So the armistice agreement was signed. That was the situation in Europe in 1918 at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. On this side of the Atlantic jubilations had been in full blast for two days on account of a premature announcement by an irrepressible correspondent for a newspaper syndicate. Here in Salt Lake City the prolonged celebration was enthusiastic to the point of frenzy. The streets were crowded with an excited population. Processions formed and paraded aimlessly almost every hour. Bands played patriotic and jig time airs. Dignified citizens cut capers without shame. Tin pan corps organized and practiced until the din made almost every celebrant delirious. Our boys had been fighting for the right of all peoples to enjoy their freedom and elude the sinister effort to shackle the weaker groups with imperialistic bonds. As Elihu Root said: Autocratic and dynastic powers had become alarmed at the advance and spread of democratic government. The announcement of an armistice, marking the end of a bloody conflict, coming 18 months after congress declared war and 12 months after our troops had been conscripted, organized, equipped, sent over the ocean and assigned to their sectors, seemed to indicate that we had hastened the end, contributed to the victory and proved our title to a share not in spoils but in the credit. Americans felt proud of their prompt response and pleased with the part they had taken in the successful effort to disarm a dangerous antagonist, to restore racial and political rights to disrupted democracies, and to lay the foundation for a permanent peace. Alas! The best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley. As men, the allied fighters had succeeded; as mice, we settled down to enjoy comfort and prosperity while the nazi reptile was plotting and preparing for revenge. Another anniversary of the armistice has come around. Today the democracies, made temporarily safe by a former generation of heroes, are in deeper danger than they were in 1914, when the aging generals of Germany decided that the time had arrived to make use of the greatest military machine of all the ages; to demonstrate the superiority of Teutonic austerity and to impose their kultur on mankind; to show plebeian upstarts that royal will alone should rule; to realize a dream militarists had indulged during four decades of drill and discipline ere the dreamers died of senile infirmities. Because our task was left unfinished 24 years ago; because the conquering allies failed to heed the counsel of General Pershing and march through Germany to Berlin before signing any document enabling the enemy to escape a semblance of the punishment he had inflicted on our friends and comrades; because the allied leaders trusted the veracity and integrity of the German leaders; because the victors did not compel obedience to the harsh terms of the peace treaty, the world is in turmoil again with imperialistic powers more aggressive and brutal, better equipped and fiercer in fanaticism, closer and more congruently arrayed against the rest of mankind than ever before. A new alignment has been created in the present war. Hitler has obliterated the old time alliance by destroying the nation of his nativity. He has formed a partnership with former foes under Hirohito and Mussolini. The latter has proved a liability because the people he betrayed and lured into the nazi trap are becoming sullenly resentful. But the Japs act in full accord with the Germans, in exacting implicit obedience and reverential adoration of their leaders; in spreading contempt for all religions that acknowledge any divinity but the emperor or fuehrer; in teaching indifference to human rights or lives and indulging in wanton slaughter of women, children and helpless hostages. All who observe this anniversary of the signing of the armistice, especially those who have watched the trend of events for 24 years, will understand the hypocrisy or simplicity of all who hold that terms imposed on the central powers were cruel and unwarranted. Had the foe been victorious the terms they had prepared were ten times more severe. They would have disarmed the allies and kept them disarmed; they would have put gestapos in every community to strictly enforce their mandates; they would have found excuses to execute all who retained sentiments of patriotism; they would have sterilized the insane, while all would have been declared crazy who failed to sink to serfdom or to appreciate their masters. Any leader of an allied government who would now make peace with nazi monsters, or sign a treaty with such perjurers, or accept the sworn pledge of such dissemblers, or entrust his people or life to such fanatics, ought to be impeached and examined for signs of insanity. Any sob sister or pious hypocrite starting a movement to pardon or parole axis arch criminals who have carried on a bestial campaign of indiscriminate killing, of rape and robbery, of shooting unarmed hostages, of torturing helpless prisoners of war, of the mutilation and starvation of civilians, driving millions into slavery and thousands to suicide, ought to be denounced and placarded as an aider and abettor of infamy and an apologist for tyranny. There can be no compromise with rabid beasts whose frothing tongues drip the virus of hatred, whose poison fangs tear the heartstrings of humanity, whose savage hirelings have been strewing the earth with the ruins of art and the bones of unoffending fellow beings. Unless the fiends and fanatics who forced this war upon the world are absolutely exterminated the fight will be renewed after another interval. Are we merely striving to save ourselves or to save posterity as well from such afflictions?