CIVILIZATION AND BARBARISM

I have a regular habit of reading old articles, especially those considered well-written, impactful, and insightful. A simple paragraph from an article titled “The Lusitania Anniversary,” intrigued me by its timeless insight, considering the current moment. The New York Tribune published the article in 1917, and won the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing.

Day by day, week by week, we Americans have since then been learning that we are not in the presence of a war between nations, a conflict between rival powers; that we are not the agonized witnesses of one more conflagaration provoked by conflicting ambitions of hereditary enemies. We have been learning that what is going forward remorselessly, steadily, is a war between civilization and barbarism, between humanity and savagery; between the light of modern times and the darkness of the years that followed the collapse of Rome.

“The Lusitania Anniversary”, New York Tribune, 1917 Pulitzer Prize in Editorial Writing

Link to “The Lusitania Anniversary”