The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1901-01-02
ARTHUR ROPES. General EDITOR
Nineteen Hundred and One.

The JOURNAL wishes its readers and
mankind in general happy New Year,
and happy new century, or so much
of the new century as their years may
be extended into the twentieth great
division of time which today has taken
up its grand march.
The transfer from the nineteenth to
the twentieth century was made as
quietly as the sun passes the meridian.
Father Times movements are not spas
modic or sensational. The procession
of the years and the procession of the
centuries is as noiseless and undemon-
strative as the movements of the
spheres. As in mundane affairs the
fuss is monopolized by the smaller fry
of men or phenomena, 80 in celestial
the meteor may fash through the skies
or explode with loud defamation, but
the cycles of time swing silently and
majestically along their course.
The nineteenth century with all its
marvellous progress and its beneti-
cences to humanity is numbered ir-
revocably with the past. In existing
political conditions, human unrest and
world-dlsturbance are strikingly sim
liar to conditions existing at the close
of the eighteenth and the opening of
the nineteenth centuries. In Europe
the French Revolution and the appear
ance of Napoleon in the arena of ma
tions had unsettled the whole continent.
In America the young republic was
wrestling with the burdens and respon-
sibilities of new nationality. 1t was
on guard against its enemies abroad
while struggling with the elements Of
internal discomfort and racked by fac
tional political warfare. Today a gen.
eral condition of armed strife exists,
but it's active scenes are far removed
from the area of disturbance century
back. The military power of every
nation of Europe and of the United
States is represented in the Far East.
For France England finds more de-
structive enemy in South Africa. For
the internal perils and problems that
were confronting the United States in
it's infancy are substituted the new
questions and dangers that have arisen
by the acquisition of Spanish territory
and the responsibility for the regenera-
ton of Cuba. Mighty questions and
boundless responsibility!
The twentieth century.hath its charms
of harvest fields rolling between the
Atlantic and the Pacific, of great cities
and teeming populations, of lakes and
rivers burdened with internal commerce,
OF vast systems of communication on
land and through the air:
"But pass three leeting centuries back;
This land torpid giant slept,
Wrapped in its mantle thick and black
That DER its mighty form had crept
Since time began and Earth
Shot from its Maker into birth"
To the utilitarian, and for civiliza.
ton, the condition of this land at the
beginning of this century may be better
than its first, when the red man peo-
pied its wildernesses or in his canoe
sailed its lakes and streams, when the
bison roamed the western prairies,
when the Oregon rolled in its primeval
solitude and "the groves were Gods
first temples" but there is pathos in
the change "three feeting centuries"
have wrought in the extinction of the
original wilderness and its tribes of
aborigines, in the destruction of the
animal tenants of plain and woodland,
which, "once destroyed, can never be
supplied" Some things may fairly be
charged to the account of progress"
The work of the men of the twenti-
eth century will be directed, in some
large measure, to correcting the mis-
takes OF their predecessors and restor-
ing to the country some of the benefits
and blessings of which it has been
robbed by a too ardent progressive
spirit, too strenuous utilitarianism, q
prodigality born of greed or the pinch
ing necessities of the pioneer-not to
include some of their descendants of
very recent generations. And this
may turn out to be the greatest ma
terial work of the century, task on
which Europe has long been engaged
and which has become one of the most
important cares of government.
The Nineteenth Century.