Wausau pilot. [volume] (Wausau, Wis.) 1896-1940, 1901-01-15
What VIII the Harvest be ?

Nations addicted to making war upon
lower in the scale of military efficiency
and on the other hand develop the
spirit of savagery and cruelty. Thus it
is that Great Britain and Spain, with
no appreciable k.nship of race or blood,
1t was not so with England before she
entered upon her vast colonial schemes.
A hundred years ago her soldiers had
no superiors in Europe, and her gen.
erals were as manly and humane as the
average, except when actuated by Sec
tartan passions. How changed have
they become by long period of war
with inferior races This result is log
ical There is much of the brutal in
the vocation of war. And wars which
are conducted for mere conquest and
not for the defense of high principles,
attract largely the brutal element in
human nature The brutality of this
element may be curbed by public opin-
ion. When the eyes of the world are
upon it cowardice rescues it, for the
time being, from its worst passions.
But wheE it burrows into unknown
Africa, or unknown India or China, or
the Philippines, where there are no
railroads or telegraphs or newspaper
correspondents, when it finds that it
can be brutal, cruel and licentious, with
out being observed by any except that
All-seeing eye for which it has no re-
spect, then it acts out freely and openly
the cowardly brute that it, by nature,
is. And even where there are railroads,
telegraphs and newspaper correspond
ents that recent Spanish device of
Satan, the censorship, encourages this
spirit of brutality in men who have be-
come soldiers for the mere love of sol
diering. And the little thaS occasion
ally comes to us in rour la oout way,
from the Philippine Islands and from
South Africa or China, only suggests
the volumes that remain undisclosed of
cruel, cowardly and brutal passion and
its orgies Whether from charity or
from shame some Americans, writing
from the islands, have called this insan-
itv. And now, after that other cursed
device of Spain, the reconcentrado
camp has been adopted by the British
in South Africa, and the Boer women
and children have been huddled into
these camps for some time past, the first
news the world gets of the horrid
cruelty, shame aud insult inflicted upon
these poor women and their babies by
savage Kaffirs and brutal soldiers, at
the command of British officers, comes
to the world not from the Beers who
are shut out from the world, nor from
the deputy devils who are doing these
horrid things, but from an English
woman who writes home, not of the
barbaritieS, which she did not witness,
but of the women who were its victims,
whom she saw and who bore its marks
upon their faces and upon their bodies
from which the clothing had been torn,
and who lamented for their babies left
to Starve or be burned TO death in the
homes from which these women had
been dragged How long will these
things be permitted to endure For
less cruelty in carrying out reeoncen-
trado orders the American people were
SO wrought up that they compelled q
declaration of war. These poor Beers
are far from US; the Cubans are upon
our threshold. We do not fully realize
what is passing so far away from us.
But it is there, as black a chapter, or
perhaps the very blacklist that darkens
British history. Is the Almighty and
Mereiful One waiting to give humanity
an opportunity to uedeem itself from
these crimes by rising against the Grim
Inals The world looks on. Macy of
us are almost dumb with horror, others,
and these chiefly the men who rule aud
govern the nations are mute from sndif
ference. And the Christian minister
What is he saying Practically nothing.