War: 1915. World War I

“[In the minutes of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace about 1911] the trustees raised a question. ‘Is there any means known to man more effective than war, assuming you wish to alter the life of an entire people?’ [A]t the end of the year, they came to the conclusion that there was no more effective means to that end known to man. So, then they raised question number two, and the question was, ‘How do we involve the United States in a war?’” (Research Director for the House of Representatives Norman Dodd, Weak Link: The Feminization of the American Military, 1953.)

“There is one and only one legitimate goal of United States foreign policy. It is a narrow goal, a nationalistic goal: the preservation of our national independence. Nothing in the Constitution grants that the president shall have the privilege of offering himself as a world leader. He is our executive; he is on our payroll; he is supposed to put our best interests in front of those of other nations. Nothing in the Constitution nor in logic grants to the president of the United States or to Congress the power to influence the political life of other countries, to ‘uplift’ their cultures, to bolster their economies, to feed their people, or even to defend them against their enemies.” (Ezra Taft Benson, America at the Crossroads, August 30, 1969.)

“The Rockefeller Foundation and the Council on Foreign Relations…intend to prevent, if they can, a repetition of what they call in the vernacular “the debunking journalistic campaign following World War I.” Translated into precise English, this means that the Foundation and the Council do not want journalists or any other persons to examine too closely and criticize too freely the official propaganda and official statements relative to “our basic aims and activities” during World War II. In short, they hope that, among other things, the policies and measures of Franklin D. Roosevelt will escape in the coming years the critical analysis, evaluation and exposition that befell the policies and measures of Woodrow Wilson and the Entente Allies after World War I.” (Charles Beard, former president of the American Historical Association Who's to Write the History of the War?, Saturday Evening Post, p. 172. October 4, 1947.)

“Nor may we overlook that great doctrine of neutrality set up under Washington himself and Jefferson and Hamilton, which was aimed at and brought about the localizing of international armed conflicts, and the preservation , under prescribed rules, of peacetime intercourse between belligerents and nonbelligerents. War was to curse as few people as possible. This has been jettisoned for the concept that every war should involve all nations, making all suffer the ravages of a global war.

“Until the last quarter of a century, this gospel of the Fathers was the polar star by which we set our international course. In the first hundred thirty years of our constitutional existence, we had three foreign wars, the first merely the final effort of our Revolution, which made good our independence. During the century that followed we had two foreign wars, neither of considerable magnitude. During the next twenty-three years, we had two global wars. While the gospel of the Fathers guided us we has peace. When we forsook it, two great wars engulfed us.” (J. Reuben Clark, Let Us Have Peace, Church News, November 22, 1947.)

“President Wilson had the full departure in mind [of the Founders doctrine of neutrality] when he declared: ‘Everybody’s business is our business.’ Since then we have leaped ahead along the anciently forbidden path.” (J. Reuben Clark, Let Us Have Peace, Church News, November 22, 1947.)

“Yet, to repeat, we have entered into new fields to impose our will and concepts on others. This means we must use force, and force means war, not peace. What has our apostasy from peace cost us?” (J. Reuben Clark, Let Us Have Peace, Church News, November 22, 1947.)

“In values of government and law, these wars and the interminglings of men of different concepts of freedom and human rights, have brought into our own system, the despotic principles of European systems, against which the Fathers warned…” (J. Reuben Clark, Let Us Have Peace, Church News, November 22, 1947.)

“I believe American manhood is too valuable to be sacrificed on foreign soil for foreign issues and causes.” (J. Reuben Clark, Let Us Have Peace, Church News, November 22, 1947.)

“I believe that permanent peace will never come into the world from the muzzle of a gun. Guns and bayonets will, in the future as in the past, bring truces, long or short, but never peace that endures.” (J. Reuben Clark, Let Us Have Peace, Church News, November 22, 1947.)

“Someone will, at this point, play the ace question, with that smug finality that always accompanies it, — What would you do? I frankly answer, I do not know, for I do not know the facts. Furthermore a critic with no authority or power in a situation, and from whom is withheld a knowledge of facts, is under no obligation to propose an alternative. He may rest by pointing out defects in policy.

“We, the common people, have not been told the facts for years, since long before the last war broke. We are not now being told the facts. We can only surmise. But give us the facts and we will answer. And in our multitude of counsel you will find wisdom.” (J. Reuben Clark, Let Us Have Peace, Church News, November 22, 1947.)

“We are a warlike people, easily distracted from our assignment of preparing for the coming of the Lord. When enemies rise up, we commit vast resources to the fabrication of gods of stone and steel—ships, planes, missiles, fortifications—and depend on them for protection and deliverance. When threatened, we become antienemy instead of pro-kingdom of God; we train a man in the art of war and call him a patriot, thus, in the manner of Satan’s counterfeit of true patriotism.” (President Spencer W. Kimball, Ensign, June 1976.)

“Again, and as another check upon the executive, in his conduct of international relations, the diplomatic representatives of the government must be, as we the people provided in the Constitution, nominated by the President and approved by the Senate. But the habit is growing of appointment by the President of quasi-diplomatic representatives, ‘ambassadors at large’ they call them, who ‘going to and fro in the earth and walking up and down’ — to use Job’s phrase — bring their harvests to the President. President Wilson was the first to give this device considerable importance when he sent the ubiquitous Colonel House to Europe. Col. House (not approved by the senate) with the President’s approval, committed us to enter World War I on the side of the Allies more than a year before Congress declared war.” (J. Reuben Clark, Church News, November 29, 1953.)

“…peace would have been made with Germany, and there would have been no collapse in Russia leading to Communism; no breakdown of government in Italy followed by Fascism; and Naziism never would have gained ascendancy in Germany.” (Winston Churchill, observed that all nations would have been better off had the U.S. minded its own business, even though he actively recruited FDR into the war. Social Justice Magazine, p. 4. July 3, 1939.)

“[Edward Bernays and Wilson's Creel Commission] succeeded, within six months, in turning a pacifist population into a hysterical, war-mongering population which wanted to destroy everything German, tear the Germans limb from limb, go to war and save the world.” (Noam Chomsky, 1991.)

“Because those whom we have studied thus far in this chapter specialized in restricting information, that lack of information became the frame of reference for the majority. Sadly, those accepting the skewed information unwittingly became tools of a satanic force. By blindly following the Pied Piper of German revulsion, millions lost their lives both at home and abroad and our nation began its plummet into bankruptcy.” (Dr. Jack Monnett, p. 215. 2006.)

Grey: “What will America do if the Germans sink an ocean liner with American passengers on board?”

House: “I believe that a flame of indignation would sweep the United States and that by itself would be sufficient to carry us into the war.” (“Colonel” Edward Mandell House, a conversation between “Colonel” House and English Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Gray The Lusitania, p. 134.)

“We are in the midst of the greatest exhibition of propaganda that the world has ever seen.” (J. Reuben Clark, Conference Report, October 1941.)