The Cairo bulletin. (Cairo, Ill.) 1???-1928, 1909-01-04
PRESENT AND PAST DISASTERS.

| Despite the full and vivid descrip-
lions OF conditions In the southwest.
Tern part of Italy that the correspond
tents are cabling to the newspapers
1t IL hardly possible for the average
mind to comprehend the yastness of
the destruction of life and property
wrought by the earthquake and its
lsequent evils. To say that a city has
| been destroyed on the other side of
| the earth conveys a certain fact TO
1.-THE mind, but the imagination alone
can color, expand and elaborate the
bare fact into a picture. To grasp the
Isceres in Messina and Reggie you
must gaze with your imagination
upon miles of debris that was once
upright and intact buildings. You
must conceive the broken pillars, the /
ruined roofs. the fallen walls, the /
scattered bricks and stone. the twist
ed iron, the stencil of decaying
things, the fires that consume the
wreckage. the smoke. You must
the people living amidst the
remnants of a city; living, but fren-
ziad tortured, robbed OF loved ones, I
propertyess. And you
must contemplate the dead. There Is
the most difficult task--to compre-
bend the work of death. Between
I00, 300 and 200 600 humong beings
YOU take that in? When
he lroquois theater in Chicago
burned some 500 were killed yet 7
hat was a stupendous disaster. When y
he steamer Gen. Slocum burned 8
bout 900 persisted, and that was a Il
istoric disaster. The San Francisco "
arthquake destroyed property and N
nded some 1000 lives. and Ameri-
ans will never cease to talk of the |
of the horror But In
italy the loss of life is {
ot 500, or Loco, or even 5000, bur
pward OF 100000 Pause a moment
Id take It inf you can
VIII history a thousand years Il
ence give to the Messna and Reg c
o catastrophes the same romantic h
ace it gives today to Pompeii and U
ereulaneum? 1t is doubtful The p
orld move more rapidly now than [,
did then and it will move more b
Id more rapidly as the centuries Il
lss. The story OF Pompeii ana h
erculaneum was SLOW in reaching 81
e res tot the world, for there We're
, newspapers and cables. The p
CRY of Messina and Reggie. ON the S
hei Ian |. is told as it is made. The
lople OF the earth are permitted to Ct
Tsp and thrill as the drama itself is L
lacted They practically look on Is
the. events proceed. The drama Il
self will soon be over Then the Il
saster will have lost its power to Il
rll, 1t will be simply a historic Il
ct Il
One OF the great results of the o
swspaper aud the telegraph is the Il
pid disposal of events-the quick c
IiLging dry Of great episodes They
irpen and in an instant are past q
e are In the habit of investing
,mpoii and Herculaneum with a [
arked glamour because of the pro.
sses by which the story of the two
lies mas reached rs and the tradl-
ms that have become entwined h,
tn that story If there had been ST
'wspapers and telegraph wires IN cl
e days of Pompeii and Herculaneum III
Q tale would have been completely
d quickly told as the events hap 10
he'd. Pompeii and Herculaneum. hi
tn all the horror of their destrrc. in
N would carry to us of today -
ghter impressions of romantic III
andeur and terror than they 10.
icy would merely suggest historic til
ties and NEUTRALITY-SUSPICIOUS.. or