Holmes County farmer. [volume] (Millersburg, Ohio) 1857-1926, 1865-11-16
civilization and Ba arbarisin.

1t sometimes happens that III frontier
communities some wild beasts obtain a
lodgment in the neighborhood, and nightly
commit depredations upon the property Of
the inhabitants In India, tigers that have
gotten taste of human blood make their
lair in a jungle near some village, and thence
forth prey upon unsuspccting travellers. In
both these cases the remedy is usually the
same The people unite, and in strong par
ties surround the hiding places of these
beast, and destroy them.
What occurs not unfrcquently in the case
of brutes and men, has counterpart in
barbarism and civilization. At short inter
walls there issues from the jungles of Asia
or the sandy deserts of northern Africa
ferocious pestilence that traverses the world,
Staying its tens Of thousands on its west
ward march No barrier that the ingenui-
ty of enlightened men can erect are suffi-
cient to guard against the furays of this
Asatic monster 1t circles the world, and
with its jaws clotted with the best blood of
human kind, it retircs to its lair in the jun
giles, and remains there till its gorged appe-
tite gives way to ravenous hunger.
Following the example of the frontier
settlement and the Hindostan village, ought
not civilization to unite its efforts to secure
the determination of this common enemy?
Asia and Africa are swarming with debased
millions whose prominence in the economy
of human kind is, that from them emanate
malign influences which periodically deci-
mate civilization. The interests of civili-
zatlon are supreme, and they should pre-
vail even at the expense of reducing to u
a desert the present abode Of these Asiatic
and African barbarians. Had we the pow
er to strike, at one blow, every barbarian in
| tu,n ,,I 4
we exercise that power tomorrow, there
the human race, than is done by the raw
ages of cholera for single hour in Paris or
New York or Chicago. The life of one en-
! lightcned citizen in this nineteenth century
is to the life of whole Asatic provinces
what a mountain in one scale of balance
is to the dust in the other. One is every
thing, the other nothing; this zero that in
fnitude.
Considering the disproportion of inter
ests involved, it is the right of civilization
to protect itself against the devastations
which own their origin to barbarism. 1t is
not merely right, but duty-the sacred
one of selfprotection.
The only practical sugguestion thus far
made i'm this direction has been given the
world by France. That country proposes a
union Of civilized nations, in an effort to es-
tabliah Il protectorate over the people from
whom emanate these destroying pestiences.
1t is suggested that each nation contribute
its quota of men and means, and that along
the southern shores of the Mediterranean
there be established police who shall en-.
force sanitary measures among these barba-
rians in whose midst originate all the worst
scourges of the human race. 1t is to be
hoped that the effort will succeed, and that
if necessary the sword will be used unspar-
ingly in its accomplishment.
| The issue between barbarism and civliza-
ton on this continent has been mercilessly
yet properly disposed of; and this by the
almost total exterminatiOn of the former.
1t is the magnitude and not the injustice of
the task which prevents the same solution
of the same problem in the case of all civ
ization and all barbarism. Had barbarisin
is IA single neck, and could civilization sever
it at blow, it would do the former no
wrong, and would do the latter vast good
For our own safety and interests, and for
the salty and interests of future enlighten-
ment, should civilization establish a protcc-
tnrate over barbarism everywhere. These
A~iatic and African tribes have a right to
life and to practices and habits only when
they are innnocuous to the rest of mankind.
-Chicago Hn,cs