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About this quote

What does it mean?
Hoover states that while older leaders start wars, young people fight and suffer the consequences.
In plain terms
Older men start wars but young people fight and die.
What can you take from it?
Youth pays the human price for decisions made by elders.

Where it applies

  • military recruitment
  • war policy
  • generational conflict

Putting it to work

  • anti-war advocacy
  • veteran support

Questions to consider

  • Who decides when to go to war?
  • Is the cost of war fairly distributed?

Another view

It generalizes all older men as war mongers.

More from Herbert Hoover

  1. Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt.

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  2. What this country needs is a great poem. John Brown's Body was a step in the right direction. I've read it once, and I'm reading it again. But it's too long to…

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  3. A good many things go around in the dark besides Santa Claus.

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