Holmes County Republican. [volume] (Millersburg, Holmes Co., O. [Ohio]) 1870-1895, 1874-07-02
The Crusade T oretold.

The following published two years
ago in ,Seri6ner's Monthly, seems now
most like prophecy:
Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are
marching; how many Of them; Sixty
full regiments, every man of which
will, before twelve months shall have
completed their course lie down in the
grave of a drunkard! Every year DUR
ing the past decade has witnessed the
same sacrifice; and sixty regiments
stand behind this armyready TO take it's
place. 1t is to be recruited from our
children and our children's children.
"Tramp, tramp, tramp. the sounds
come to us in the echoes of the footsteps
off the army just expired; tramp, tramp,
tramp,--the earth shakes with the tread
OF the host now passing; tramp, tramp,
tramp, comes to us from the camp of
the recruits. A great tide of life flows
resistlessly TO its death. What in Gods
name are they fighting for? The priv
ilege OF pleasing an appetite, of con-
forming to social usage, of filing six
ty thousand homes with sorrow and
shame, Of loading the public with the
burden of pauperism, of crowding our
prison-houses with fellons, of detracting
from the productive industries of the
country, running fortunes and breaking
hopes, of breeding disease and wretch
edness, of destroying both body and
soul in he'll before their time.
The prosperity of the liquor interests
covering every department of it, de-
pends entirely oil the maintenance OF
this army. 1t cannot live without it. 1t
never did live without it. So long as
the liquor interest maintains its present
prosperous condition, it will cost Amer
lea the sacrifice of sixty thousand men
every year. The effect is inseparable
from the cause. The cost TO the country
of the liquor traffic is sum so stupen-
dous that any figures which we should
dare to give would convict us of rifiing
The amount Of lives absolutely destroy
&c, the amount of bread transformed in
to poison, the shame, the unav ,iling
sorrow, the crime, the poverty, the pau
perism, the brutality, the wild waste of
vital and financial resources, make an
aggregate so vast-so incidentally vast
that the only wonder is that the Amer
lean people do not rise as one man and
declare that this great curse shall exist
no longer. DilettaRte conventions are
held on the subject of peace, by men
and women who find it necessary to
fiddle to keep themselves awake. A hue
and cry is raised about woman suffrage
as If any wrong which may be involy
ed in woman's lack of the suffrage
could be compared to the wrongs at
tached to the liquor interest!
Does any sane woman doubt that
women are suffering thousand times
more from rum, than from any polit-
ical disability?
The truth is, that there is no question
before the American people to-day That
begins to match in Importance the tenn
perance question. The question of
American slavery was never anything
but baby by the side Of this; and we
prophesy that within ten years, if not
within five, the whole country will be
awake to it and divided upon it. The
of the liquor interests,
the vast funds at its command, the nni-
versal feeling among those whose bus
iness is pitted against the national pros
perity and the public morals-these are
enough to show that, upon one side of
this matter, at least, the present cOndi-
tiOn of things and the social and polit-
ical questions that lie in the immediate
future are apprehended. The liquor in
terests know there is to be Il great strug-
gle, and is preparing 10 meet it. Peo-
pie both in this country and Great Brit
ain are beginning to realize that Chris
tian civilization is actually poisoned at
its fountain, and that there can be no
publication Oft until the source of the
poison is dried up.