Kansas agitator. [volume] (Garnett, Kan.) 1890-1905, 1899-12-15
GENERAL HENDERSON ON WAR.
Will He Say it Now?

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house, made the following speech at soldiers
gathering in Chicago, Sept. IL, 1863 All true,
loyal Americans endorse the sentiments ex-
pressed in this speech. Would Speaker Hen
derson say the same things now?
General Henderson said:
Mr.. PRESIDENT: My theme to-day is war,
and l am against it. l wish had all the gifts
to speak my adherence of war.
Art, poetry romance and history have mag
nifed and glori6ed the soldier but the time is
coming when these great instruments of power
will desert their favorite theme and lead the
great forces of thought away from the slaugh
ter-house up to the higher fields of human
action.
The bull-6ght, the cockpit, the prize-ring
and the battle-f field must all 60 down together.
1t takes courage, grant, to face death. The
sufe1ings and the tlials OF the soldier have not
been exaggerated; but the courage needed to
face danger and death ranks below the cou1age
that faces the superstition, the prejudices the
wealth and the established customs of the world.
The great man reasons; the small man fights.
Grants words of peace will survive his
mightiest war-cry.
The cost of war alone should make us stop
and think
The public debts of the world are twenty
nine billions, and 1t is safe to say that every
dollar of this is the fruit of war. What
strain upon earth, shop and fields!
In one hundred years, Great Britain has paid
$4,7o2, zoo, oIo for
During these hundred years, fifty of
them were devoted to human slaughter.
The cost of our own war was Sc, sos ,429, 900.
Young as we are as a nation, we have spent
eighteen long years in battlc-four of them in
deadly fratracdal strife. To-day, the genius of
our country--indeed, of the worlds bending
all its powers to increase the capacity for de-
structon of all the terrible engines of death.
Is it not high time that each citizen became
Nazarine to proclaim peace among the people?
Let every martyrs grave be sermon and ev-
cry widows wall a hymn for peace,
Let us cut down our army bill and save our
earnings for the school house, the library and
the home.
Europe Is expanding her armies $SI4,-
900 900 annually. No wonder the children of
the Old World have been seeking new home
Should humanity weep i'll order that tyrants
may laugh?
Should the homes of the people be loaded
down with billions of debt in order that some
heartless murderer may wear dadem?
The wretches that have wrought this drsola
ton are the panthers, the hyenas aud the
ghouls of humanity.
appeal to you, brave men of many battles,
who have seen and felt and comprehendedl l
crv out to you to throw your influence into the
scales and urge the world TO seek some forum
where the arbitrator shall not be the dripping
sword.
War is demoralizing.
War is desoatng.
War consumes the toll and comfort of our
people
War is the worlds terrible, relentless, re-
norseess inqus;tion.
War is the weapon OF tyrants; the prop of
thrones.
War, the pathway to hell, has been the pre-
tended passage to heaven.
War has been justi6able, perhaps, and may
be again, as SolletllheS ID INC Surgeon hhiie,
but only to save life, or something better and
dearer than life.
Let the time come prayed for by the
poet:
Till the war drum throbbed no longer
And the battlehags are furled
In the parliament of man. the federation OF the world;
There the OF most
Shall hold fretful realm i'll awe,
And the kindly earth shall sumber apt in universal law
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