"WE CAN'T BURN OUR FINGERS"
Chamberlain in the Home of Commons. March 16, 1938.
This statement of Chamberlain's should fill every British citizen with horror and contempt.
That same night thousands of men, women and children in Barcelona were being torn, mangled and burned alive by bombs from Hitler's and Mussolini's planes.
" WE CAN'T BURN OUR FINGERS," says Chamberlain, as innocent babies' flesh and blood stains Barcelona's streets. When Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote " The Cry of the Children," it was the Chamberlains she had in mind.
" 'How Long,' they say, 'how long,' O cruel nation,
Will you stand, to move the world, on a child's heart, —
Stifle down with a mailed heel its palpitation,
And tread onward to your throne amid the mart?
Our blood splashes upward, O gold heaper,
And your purple shows your path!
But the child's sob in the silence curses deeper
Than the strong man in his wrath." [SEE OTHER SIDE