Devils Lake inter-ocean. (Devils Lake, Ramsey Co., Dakota [N.D.]) 1884-1905, 1899-11-03
DEVILS LAKE INTER, OCEAN, FRIDAY NOVEMBER 8. 1897

anxious to civilize? If in order to
christianize the Filipinos, our field
must be laid waste, our churches
desecrated. our women and child
rem driven from their homes,
would we be SO eager to christian
ize? Hear the words Of one of
the worlds greatest thinkers.
"What, speaking in quite un-
official language is the net purport
Of war? To my own knowledge,
for example, there dwell and toll
in the British village Of Dunn
drudge, usually some five hundred
souls. From these by certain
natural enemies" Of the French
there are successfully selected,
during the French war, say thirty
le-bodied men. Dumdrudge,
at her own expense, has sucked
and nourished them; she has, not
without difficulty and sorrow, fed
them up to manhood, and even
trained them to crafts, SO that one
can weave, another build, another
hammer, and the weakest can stand
under thirty stone avoirdupois.
Nevertheless, they are selected
and shipped away at the public
charge, say to the south Of Spain,
and fed there till wanted.
"And now to that same spot in
the south Of Spain are thirty simil-
ar French artisans, from a French
Dumdrudge, in like manner wend-
ing, till at length the two parties
meet, Thirty fronting Thirty, each
with a gun in his hand.
"Straightway the word Fire! is
given, and they blow the souls out
Of one another, and in place Of
sixty brisk, useful craftsmen the
world has sixty dead carcasses,
which it must bury, and anon shed
tears over. Had these men any
quarrel? Busy as the devil is,
not the smallest! They lived far
enough apart; were the entirest
strangers. How then? Simpleton!
their governors had fallen out;
and instead Of shooting one anoth-
er had the cunning to make these
poor blockheads shoot."-Carlyle.
If the good old pagan methods
Of warfare still obtained, and the
government leaders must take the
field to face bullets and die in
bitches, there would yet be- peace
in the Transvaal, and Britain's
aged queen, in the twilight Of her
life, would not be called upon to
grieve over Tommy Atkin dying
uncomplainingly in South African
trenches ''for England's sake
Ii our own government leaders
were compelled to go to the Philip
pines in stuffy transports, to give
time, strength, health, life itself at
the call Of others, silently suffer
ing, patiently enduring, would not
a way have been found out Of this
war? How much better to buy off
Aguina]do, Pillar, ct al than to
sacrifice the unsophisticated dupes
of these sordid traitors! But we,
who are happily removed from the
carnage and de~solation, shut our
ears to the death cries, as we pur-
sue our daily avocations and
figure npon how much we will be
benefited by the acquisition of
the islands. We "draw the cur
tains and muf1e the openings, so
that from the pit Of the circus Of
slaughter there may reach us only
at intervals. a half heard cry and
a murmer as Of the winds signing,
when myriads Of souls expire"
Ruskin says that the real reason
for all the poverty, misery, and
rage of battle lies at woman's door.
Is it not therefore meet that wo-
men, CHRISTIAN women, temper
ence women should protest against
war, and should hail arbitration
as the only method for the SETTLE
ment Of international complica-
tons; although not forgetting
Heine's words: everywhere that
a great soul gives utterance to its
thoughts, there also is Golgotha;"
although remembering that every
great truth must fight it's way to
recognition in the face Of detrac-
ton. The courage to seek and to
speak the truth is the characters