Toward the Valley of Decision
THEY shall go down to the Valley of Decision, multitudes of young Americans from East and West, from North and South, some slow to have gone into the war but none ever to go out until a Decision shall have been reached.
Into the Valley of Decision,—for a Decision final and irrepealable we are battling. Not a Decision as to the victor in the war, but a Decision that shall give us victory over war, its defenders and glorifiers! For the German Empire which wars made this war shall unmake.
We go down to the Valley of Death for a Decision whether the world shall be ruled by Germany or by civilization, be subject to Prussianism or master of its own fate and freedom.
And America knows the cost, which it refuses to count,—knows its sons must be slain if liberty and justice are to live.
To the God of Justice, America lifts its heart in prayer, beseeching not security for its beloved sons but vowing that the sun shall perish out of the heavens ere we and our Allies surrender our liberty, the freedom of the least of men, to the barbarism of force and the forces of barbarism.
Out of the Valley of the Shadow of Death shall emerge the Decision,—Never again. The war against war has brought freedom to nations, and secured peace to them that seek public right as the law of mankind.
STEPHEN S. WISE, Ph.D., LL.D., Rabbi of the Free
Synagogue, New York.