The Hawaiian star. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu]) 1893-1912, 1901-11-23
A MAD WORLD, MY MASTERS.

aesthetic, more ETHEREAL than any age
that has gone by. 1t claims to be the
direct heir of many ages. 1t has the
polish of the Greek, and here and there
some of it's members can read a Greek
play intelligenty and pirate about
Theocritus. 1t has both the sturdiness
and polish of the Roman, and more can
read their Horace, their Juvenal, their
Sallust, their Florentius and their
Livy than can ever read their Greek.
Then we have Medieval Literature
ranging from Froissart to Boccaccio.
Finally we have our own superabund-
ant literature. Oh we are a wonder
fully polished race. What high ideals
we have, and how grandly we come up
TO them How superior we are at this
commencement of the twentieth CEN
tury, than were our ancestors of the
early years of the nineteenth.
When one reads the accounts of that
period one actually realizes that the
degraded Anglo-Saxons of that period
took a delight in the fights of the Tut
berry pet, and the Sussex Chicken.
nat wei Oll lulO lIlG C6IluIy The uGS-
cendents of those degraded Anglo
Saxons revealed in a struggle be-
tween the Ben.,ia boy and Tom Say
ers The citations are typical The in
1erest taken in these things began to be
considered as a mistake, and the world
decided that prize fighting was a low
and demoralizing form of entertain
ment and the prize fighter was laid on
the shelf. If one can remember right
ly, it was stigmatized on our side of
the Atlantic as a brutal British sport.
But etherialized as we may have be-
come, and however much we may have
sloughed off the skin of brutalism
which we inherited from that brutal
Anglo-Saxon, we still manage to get a
good deal of interest out of his brutal
amusements. There is more interest to
the square inch over a fight for the
championship of heavy weights medi-
am weights or light weights, than there
is over the America cup races, or any
literary achievement which can bring
undying glory to the nation. The eX-
citement over bloody prize fight per-
meates two continents and sweeps all
their neighboring islands into the un-
hallowed vortex. The result of the
Jeffries- Rubin fight was watched for,
with far more interest than ever the
announcement that Miss stone had
been released, would have been receiv-
ed, or even the massacre of a troop of
either our infantry or cavalry in the
Philippines.
The fact is that human nature is
neither any better, and possibly some
what worse than it was a century ago,
and certainly than it was two thousand
years ago. Human nature likes to look
at animated struggling. 1t does not
shrink from the sight of blood. 1t does
not desire to see death, in the ring, but
it is perfectly satisfied to see a man
fought to a finish and lie practically
dead. We have no gladiatorial games,
but we have what comes very near to
them, and we keep the blood hunger
alive very nearly as much as the
Caesars did in Rome.
Twenty dollars a seat was paid the
other day in San Francisco to see one
slugger of enormous power, knock
about another slugger of less power,
until in five rounds the minor man
threw up the sponge and confessed
himself beaten. And then the crowd
howled with derisiOn at the beaten
man, and considered that it had been
done out of it's money, because the
no strl laa %,
twenty rounds, or at all events until
his opponent had Knocked him into in
sensbility. The crowd wanted brutality
and only got a little taste of it. 1t
was really too bad.
And this is the result of centuries
upon centuries of refinement. OF the
men who pay twenty dollars a seat for
their entertainment CD at a smuggling
match, many are kindly in tempera-
ment would shrink from causing pain |
10 any individual of their own family |
are always humane towards domestic
animals and indulge themselves in re-
fined tastes both literary and artistic.
Talleyrand said Scratch the Russian
and you find the Tartar" but If Talley-
rand were on earth now he might say
Scratch the polished and refined man
of the world, and you will find the ORR
ginal brute"
However preaching at mankind never
yet made it much better. If the mo-
dern generation likes smuggling matches
it win go to them, as the pig will ever
return to it's wallow. The only fault
The Star has really to find is the hypro-
crisy and false pride of the modern.
he will mourn over and grid at the
brutality of the past, and yet he is just
as brutal in the present. In point of
fact the more highly civilized, the near
err the brutality of man seems to come
to the surface.
BRIGHTER PROSPECTS,.