Wausau pilot. [volume] (Wausau, Wis.) 1896-1940, 1900-07-31

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theme of ''The White Mans Burden
many persons of divers mental and
phrase, and rang upon it an uncouth
medley of changes. The devout and
consecrated christian missionary took
pleasure and courage from it; the shall
low sentimentalist found in it an outlet
for his bubbling emotions; the intellect
ual SKINNER who fails to discern the
difference between knowledge and wis
dom;-between memory and analysis,
picked it up as a rare revelation; the
humanity aud five per cent fellows,
moral imbeciles, who have SO little con-
science that it is impossible for them to
be hypocrites, found it catchy motto,
as likewise did their co-workers in in
iquity who knowing right and wrong
pretend that wrong is right. All sorts
of men,-good men, milk-soppy men
and bad men, found comfort in this
phrase, product of the diseased mind
of Rudyard Kipling;-a blood-thirsty
mind, la mind naturally eccentric and
egotistical, whose bad qualities were
cultivated by association with the
INSCRIPTIONS and constituencies white
governors of Hindustan.
Tho ,ooa,,, seTl,o Whit Mop,c prr
den," was written as a defense of the
land grabbers. England being the
chiefest among land grabbers, it was
appropriate that an Englishman should
write such poem. The purport of the
poem is that all the land grabbing, and
the war and devastation brought upon
unoffending peoples in aid of land
grabbing are mere symptoms of the
evolution of higher civilization. The
white man is the most highly civilized;
he is spreading his higher civilization
among less civilized or barbarous races;
he is spending blood and money in the
interests of civilization; this is his bur-
den-"The White Mans Burden
Probably no one would doubt that if
civilization were permitted to Improve
and extend itself throughout the world
in peaceful ways, it would in time do
so. 1t must be conceded that war and
its attendant cruelties and evils can
only be justified as Fastening the work.
Do they hasten it
We have an Interchangeable belief that
war is unjustitiable except in defence.
Good can never come from wars of con-
quest. Any one who truly believes in
the teachings of Christ must believe
this. Christianity spread more
rapidly during the first three centuries
of Christian era than it ever has since
then. Yet in those centuries there was
no Christian army or navy, nor any
earthly Christian monarch. Martyrs
died by the thousands, but they demon
strated, thereby, abiding faith in future
life of blessedness. and the natural
effect of this object lesson, upon the
people at large, was to multiply con-
versions from Paganism. Then, as
now, the great mass of men and women
had very little to live for, or bind them
to earth, except family ties, and duty
to keep their children fed and clothed.
The love of the parents for each other
and for their children, and the duties
arising out of the family relation, were
less than their love of Christ and the
duty imposed by faith. From such
standpoint martyrdom could only be
viewed as a means of transit from a
brief life of incessant and poorly paid
toll to an eternal life of peace and Joy.
Armies and navies, Lyddite shells,
Maxim guns and Mauser bullets, are
not to be justified as agents of Chris
tianity, or messengers of the gospel,
from any preserved word of The Savior.
And if this so called "higher civ
ilization," which the white man is
burdened by carrying into Asia and
Africa, be not Christianityit must
be the reverse. 1t is not necessarily
the case that every act done by
man, or by government, is a
Christian act, even though the man
or government be Christian. Chris
tians are sinful We must learn to dis
criminate between the act and the
actors religious belief Christian ma
tons may have been committing enor-
nous sins in Asia and Africa, not
through their missionaries, but through
their mercenary commercialists and
land grabbers We need only glance
at history to be assured that Christian
nations have been capable of commit
ting great sins in the past, even against
each other. let alone the heather.
But even those who mistakenly be-
lieve, as well as those who hypocritical-
~, or wantonly, advocate the spread of
civilization by means of the sword must
admit that those engaged in the work
have been in too much of hurry, and
that the whitemans burden in Asia now
threatens to exhaust him by its weight.
The character of the whites has been
so mercenary that they have not missed
any chance to add to their WORLDLY
wealth by selling artillery, rifles and
ammunition to the heather, and edu-
eating him in the art of modern war
fare.
Whether the present trouble is to be
real storm, or whether it be only
fitful gust preceding a storm, time alone