The mirror. (Stillwater, Minn.) 1894-1925, 1901-02-21
Vol. XIV.-NO. 81.
Written for The Prison Mirror.

AN/ late great zeal aOOuC Cn0
Y relation of religion to
peace and war. We have
seen among ecclesiastics, Dean Farrar
on the one side, has defended war,
while on the other side DR.. Parkhurst
has condemned it, each with arguments
drawn from the Bible. And more re-
Gently as in the Episcopal Church con-
ference at Providence, r. 1, we have
beheld even two laymen, Captain
Manahan and Mr.. Ernest Crosby re-
spectively, defend and denounce be-
fore the assembled Christian delegates
the resort to arms and bIoodshed.
Thus We see that along the religious
line both sides of this controversy has
its adherents all seeming to draw their
arguments or proofs from the same
fountain head. But looking at the
subject from another source, leaving
the religious phase to take it's proper
place as in the future it will undoubt-
ably do, let us consider the relation of
literature to war, subject less under
stood and less often referred, to yet ex-
ercising the most powerful influence
on the outcome of peace and war in
the history of mankind.
Mark Twain's recent speech-a few
days ago-condemning the campaign
in the Philippines, brings up the fact
that from the time of ancient Greece
the literary men as class more than
the churchmen, have been inclined to
depreciate war.
Looking at our own country during
the past fifty years, the cause of peace,
it seems, has certainly declined The
writer's who gave America its literary
fame in the middle of the past century,
Emerson, Longfellow, Bryant, Lowell
and Whittier, to name only some, were
celebrants OF peace. But their prin-
ciples seem now in the literary realm
to be defended by only few old-fash-
Toned writers. War now seems to be
defended as a divine method, its sue
cess prayed for in the pulpits of our
lands, while lynching, the whipping
post and tortures by the White Caps
and hazers have taken their places as
institutions of our land and we behold
eloquent divines clamoring in their
pulpitS for Chinese heads and wish us
to slaughter Turks for $4,000 and
many others so that one hardly ven-
lures to pronounce any proposal too
inhuman to find cultured support.
People look back to the great Amer
ican authors and orators VINO made
their influence felt throughout the land
and talk of the decline Of genius and
lack of literary men of culture. There
is not, however, any decline of genius
or lack of culture, but a seeming abdi.
cation Of literary leadership and there
can be no genuine leadership of a
country except through its literature
and press, for preachers are held in
sectarian bonds, the politician in par
tisan bonds and if the scholars and
independent thinkers do not tell the
boss-ridden, parson-ridden masses the
as people are bound to gravitate
backwards.
We as nation have already hearG
the protest of some of our finest in
tellects, among them Howell anG
Charles Norton and lately the note o.
warning sounded by Samuel Clements
may be the signal for the uprising o.
the intellectual forces in America
similar to that which we have seer
in France in the Dreyfus trial where th'
scholars and press laid low the militar,
dragon that was slowly encompassinl
their nation.
We have read how these great pub
licists defending their rights wer'
fined, challenged to duels, shot at b.
assassins yet they went on with thei
articles until one after another tn,
hostile ministries resigned and mill