The National tribune., 1910-10-27
AN .ATRoCIoUs CALUMNY.

Irebel bitterness and copperhead venom
has there been more outrageous as
lsault upon all that makes for the good
of this country than is contained in the
Iarticle in the Worlds Work What
lcould be thought of a man who would
deliberately go thru the churches OF
this country, of any and all denomina-
tions, and carefully pick out the min
listers and members against whom there
were miserable neighborhood ISLANDERS
and nasty village calumnies, and pre-
sent these as the real state of religion
in each community and the character
of the spiritual leaders of the flocks
Suppose that he should take every one
of these stories as absolutely true, mag
nifty it to the utmost, and supply what
was wanted to make it a full, rounded,
convincing Indictment. Could any
thing be more wickedly untrue, more
absolutely damaging to the cause of re-
ligion and good morals? The man would
carefully forget or ignore the 80 good
men aSd women in every congregation,
AN their lives of conscientious obedi-
cnce to the high teaching of the Re-
deemer, all their self-sacrifices, all their
work for the benefit of others. and
hold up the one erring brother or sister
rs the type of the whole congregation.
This work of infamy which would
Justly expose the author to the con-
of everyone who was striving to up
lift mankind. would yet fall short of
the wickedness of such an article as
that in the Worlds Work. The
churches and their ministers are their
own vindication against such assaults.
Every day is a witness to the good
Christian and unselfish work of minis
ters and churches in the harvest field
of the Lord. Every day shows to all
men how well the churches are full
filling the purposes for which they were
created, how well their ministers are
doing the duty imposed upon them by
their sacred vocation.
This present living testimony cam
not be brought to the defense of. the
veterans of the war of the rebellion.
They did their great work as years ago,
and the value of that work is a mat
ter of memory and historic presentation.
Unfortunately, no history can give any
adequate presentation of the long years
of severest labor, the greatest endurance
of hardships, the daily encounter of
mortal dangers, and unstinted priva-
tions which every man who served his
country had to endure. No history can
properly tell how each man had to
nerve himself up day after day, night
after night, to the most exhausting eff
fort to meet the dangers and hardships
of a soldiers life in the greatest war
that the world ever saw. No history
can tell that each individual braved
more dangers, suffered more hardships, |
endured more privations, had more ter
rible strains upon his mind and body in
his three years service than ordinary
active men meet in all their years of
vigorous life. In the four years of
the war, the Union soldiers fought /
greater and more terrible battles than
would fill century of Europe's most |
turbulent period. They made longer |
and more exhausting marches. They |
suffered more appalling losses in kill
ed and wounded, and an incomparably
greater proportion of them were broken
over n country larger than all Europe,
outside of Russia, by their incessant
activity under all possible climatic con-
ditions and by the years of desperate
struggle between armies the most res
olute, the most warIike and the most
lnyielding of any that were ever mus
.ered
The 95 men in every 100 who did |
al this, who braveIy and unfinchingIy
net every requirement of duty, who
raced under a burning sun from the /
Rappahannock to Gettysburg to meet
Pickett's charge with unyielding firm
less; who charged with supreme cour-
.ge into the blazing hell of Marye's
1ights; who climbed the steep slopes
of Mission Ridge--all these men who
illustrated to the admiration of the
world the glorious character of Amert-
can manhood are thrown into the
background and ignored, that the five
recreants who skulkcd to the rear may
be shown to be the real types of Ameri-
can manhood. 1t has not a word of
for the splendid men
who did their duty. whom Worlds
Work insiduously ISLANDERS. The desert
ers end skulkers, as statistics show.
were less than five in every 100. a
smaller proportion than was ever
known in any war, and a smaller pro-
portion than that in the Revolution or
The War of 1872, and much less than
m the Regular Army to-day This
overwhelming fact the Worlds Work
conceals TO make it appear
that the typical American soldier and
pensioner of to-day was contemptible
skulker and desertcr