The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1892-02-01

NO PROFIT IN WAR.

The popular fallacy that an occasional
"war" helps country Is about as absurd
90 the assumption that large fire. which
destroys considerable amount of prop
erty, sometimes helps town. War with
Chile would have brought Us no advant-
age. She is almost bankrupt today; has
nothing upon which we could levy indem-
nifty for the costs Of war. for British cap
itai already has a first lien upon her nj
trate beds. foreign war 70 which we
are party OF course could not enrich rs,
bills. OF course a foreign war would prob
ably enrich a few meat packers. cattle
owners and grain brokers, but to the gen.
erai tax-paying public war is always an
economic curse.
When war is described as a blessing in
disguise reference Is not made to wars be-
tween civilized modern states in settle
ment of diplomatic disputes. In the
providence of God vast wars have some
times proved of enormous revolutionary
civilizing quality. A familiar illustration
is the influence OF Alexander's vast gen.
ius for war upon the barbarian world.
lie was no more man Of spiritual splendor
of character than Napoleon; he died in
drunken debauch in the flower of his
youth, but, like Napoleon, this gifted
young Macedonian, immoral, I'M
truthful, inhuman, faithiess, became
through the divine scheme of evolution
an enormous instrument of good. He
destroyed with his sword so many un-
progressive civilizations; he annihilated
such enormous distances; he energized
and executed in a few years such a vast
destruction and reconstruction of the
known world of Asia, "setting all its kings
20 groveling on all fours around their fallen
thrones" looking for their lost crowns,
that even more than Napoleon. or Alaric,
enormous engine of the divine plan of his
torical evolution; he more than any other
man In history illustrates what the gift of
genius for war has done for the material
evolution of civilization out of the chaos.
out Of the wreck of barbarian matter and
the crush OF barbarian worlds. And
yet the ultimate beneficence of
Aiexsnder's wars is only visible when
viewed in its broadest and most far-reach-
ing affects. From the near standpoint OF
his own country and the coincident civiIi-
ration Of Athenian Greece war was even as
clearly asocial, civic and economic calam-
ity in Alexander's day as in our own. The
hand Of Alexander put out the torch of
Athenian civilization, and forced Demos
themes. its most eloquent torch-bearer, to
accept suicide rather than surrender to a
merciless conqueror.
The only war that could be waged today.
whose ultimate beneicence would swallow
up the memory of its present cost and
economic calamity, would be n great war,
whose purpose would be the thorough
breaking up of that vast barbar-
Ian lump, Russia in Europe, and
that other great barbarian lump, China in
Asia The rude smashing by war beyond
reunion OF these two vast barbarian fabrics
would do more for the world than war has
done since Napoleon's day. 1t would be
like the cutting down of vast Jungle;
the draining of its swamns; the admission
of air and sunlight 10 its noisome, malar-
iai tracts; the determination of its tigers
and the expulsion of its snakes. In any
smaller, meaner sense than this, wars.
large or small, are sources of unmixed
evil, general financial disturbance, indus
trial unrest and social corruption Wars
mean high taxes. cheap money, high
duties and the practice of picking and
stealing on every side.