“We must make a start. We must renounce war as an instrument of policy…. Even as I speak to you I may be guilty of what some men call treason…. You young men should refuse to take up arms. Young women tear down the patriotic posters. And all of you — young and old — put away your flags.”

—  Dorothy Day

Speech to Liberal-Socialist Alliance, New York City (8 December 1941), as quoted in From Megaphones to Microphones (2003) by Sandra J. Sarkela et al.
Context: There is now all this patriotic indignation about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and Japanese expansionism in Asia. Yet not a word about American and European expansionism in the same area.... We must make a start. We must renounce war as an instrument of policy.... Even as I speak to you I may be guilty of what some men call treason.... You young men should refuse to take up arms. Young women tear down the patriotic posters. And all of you — young and old — put away your flags.

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Dorothy Day 55
Social activist 1897–1980

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