The Chemawa American, February 13, 1942, Page 3, Image 3

We are in the World War
By HON. JOHN COLLIER, Commissioner
of Indian Affairs
HE stake is everything—literally every­
T
thing—that we as Americans (white
and Indian) hold dear. The World War is
invisible; we irrevocably have been sucked
into its vortex. It is the most desperate war
—not merely the hugest, but the most ruth­
less and desperate—that our planet has
known. No thought or imagination has been
informed enough or strong enough to an­
ticipate the ruthlessness, the desperation,
the all-penetrating nature of this World
War. On its outcome depends not merely
the future of republics and empires, not
In what spirit shall we—Indian and white
Americans—do what has to be done, endure
what has to be endured? Let it be the spirit
which awakens when we think deeply and
long about what it is that makes us men;
what it is that Christs and Platos lived and
died to give men; what it is that we are the
keepers of, the messengers, carrying it on to
boundless future time. Loveliness and great­
ness are our heritage, we will save them now
for future man, and fighting to save them,
we will not be changed by what we have to
do into the image of their fearful antagonist.
Not like the Japanese in their homeland or
in horror-ridden China, not like the Nazis
in their homeland or in tortured, dying Po­
merely the physical shape of a thousand
years to come, but the actual biological sur­
vival of whole races. But something far more
land or Greece. Not like these shall we be­
terrible depends on the outcome. It is
the very agony of the struggle, now upon us,
whether the human spirit shall remain
to save it for the world, is possible. Let us
alive—whether the spirit and heart of man­
accomplish that result, and not only our
kind shall go on with much beauty and
tender power, growing slowly to a more all­
country but the soul within us will have its
come through what we have to do. The in­
crease of the good spirit within us, through
victory.—Indians at Work.
sufficing beauty and tenderness, or shall be­
come a thing and a force of horror. Whether
the breath of god shall blow on the waters
of human life, as in ages gone and until
now has blown, or through the hardness of
man’s own malignly organized will, shall
blow on the waters of life no more.
It is going to be a long war. It can have
no indecisive ending. What we love will
go down for a long age, or its enemy will
go down for a long age.
A long war, requiring of us more than
any of us as yet can foresee. Unless we give
that more which will be required, all that
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
Born February 12, 1809
GEORGE WASHINGTON
Born February 22, 1732
we live by and care for will be sunk.
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