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INTERNATIONAL DESK
Why They
Needed
a''Magazine
of Understanding''
Fifty
Years Ago
T.
Eugene, Oregon
y
didn't know each other,
but in late October 1933, two editors sat
not far from here putting their publications
together.
The editor of the
Jefferson Review
never
claimed his newspaper to be one of the world's
major newspapers. l ts job in the Great
Depression was, once a week, to faithfu lly
report the events of a peaceful farming
community in the Willamette Valley, a few
miles north of Eugene.
But even a small newspaper has a responsibility to
t ry to inform its readers of more than local trivia.
Oregon's Willamette Valley was a peaceful place,
but the news from outside was worrying. Far away
across the ocean, war clouds were gathering again
over Europe.
1
t
had been less than 16 years since the end of the
First World War. In November 1918 GermanY
signed an armistice, and her Kaiser had gone into
exile.
lt
had been a bloody war, the like of which
the world had not seen.
lt
was fought in the fields of
France and Belgium, but its hor ror was brought
home to the Willamette Valley when sorne of the
local fellows who went off to fight returned maimed,
wounded--or to be buried.
When the guns were finally silenced, a shocked
world said, "Never again." That had to be the war
to end all wars.
But now new rulers in Europe were starting to
sound belligerent. Yes-it was worrying-very
22
worrying indeed . T he
Jefferson Review's
readers
needed to know what was going on.
And so, amid the news of plans for organizing a
harmonica band and occurrence of the school
carnival, the editor printed this:
"We have advanced far in our civi1ization, but not
so far, that we cannot hear the rattling of the sabre.
Difficult ies now, as in the time of David and
Goliath, must be settled with vast armies, death to
the youth of the world, and a step backward in all
that civilization is supposed to have accomplished.
lnstead of using common sense, understanding, and
reasoning when sorne difficulty arises, we fly off in a
tangent, and the argument can only be settled by a
fiare of brass bands, uniforms, marching feet,
exploding guns and death....
"Greed for more power, more wealth is usually the
basic cause for war.... War looms heavy on the
continent, and the futility of the [last] World War is no
argument against another. We can only hope and pray
that the human race has advanced a step since that war,
and that this lurking danger of conflict can be escaped
through our superior intelligence and Christian religion
of which our present civi lization so boldly boasts."
l found this old editorial among the microfilmed
records on file at the University of Oregon Library in
Eugene. 1 don't suppose more than a handful of people
have read it for more than half a century. But probably
most of the
Jefferson Review's
few hundred readers
read it back in October 1933. Perhaps it reassured
them, because in 1933, the thought of another war was
terrible to contemplate. The weapons were too
awesome-the consequences too dreadful.
The First World War had shown that the days
when quarrels could be decided by hired armies in
set-piece battles were over. Whole
populations-soldiers and civi lians- had been
involved. It had been total war. So, said the
Jefferson Review,
our "superior intelligence" and
"Christian religion" must lead us to find a better
way to solve conflicts between nations.
Needless to say, they didn't. In 1939, the Second
World War in Europe began, and millions more
were to die before it was over. During nearly six
years of conflict, "superior intelligence" and
"advanced civilization" developed the technology and
apparatus of slaughter to new heights.
The editor of the
Je.fferson Review
didn' t know all
this, of course. What he did know caused him to select
that poignant editorial for bis readers. But there was
something important that the author of this li ttle piece
did not understand. He was not the only one.
The PLAIN TRUTH
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