The progressive farmer and southern farm gazette., 1910-12-24
PROGRESSIVE FARMER AND GAZETTE.

Northern writer George S. Merriam, in recent
historical work says of our civil war:
.Rut a succinct account of the whole busi-
ness would be to say that for four years the
flower of the countrys population were en-
gagged in killing each other. All other indus
tries were overshadowed by the occupation
of human slaughter. Men not ON!
witness such carnage, but nfict 1t, in the
excitement of battle, because animated by
feelings OF which only part can rightly be
called heroic. The ordinary cour-
age of the battlefield is largely excitement,
half-animal, half-contagous, running often
into savagery and nsensate fury. In that
situation the highest and lowest elements In
man come into play, though for the most
part only the highest is portrayed for us by
historians and romancers Army
life always brings to many of its partici-
pants a great Generalization. Take away
the restriction of public opinion in a we'll
ordered community, take from men the So
ciety of good women, and there viii be
tendency to barbarism. A civilized army has
indeed code and public opinion of It's own.
which counts for some sterling qualities. but
it is lax and ineffective for much that goes to
complete manhood. Just as the left
host of MANNED and crippled. so 1t left null
titude of moral cripples. . The hnan-
cal debt the war left behind II not the
heaviest part of the after-cost."
Upon the same point the writer quotes Mrs
Rebcca Harding Daviss account OF how. on n
visit to Concord in time, she heard Louisa
Alcotts father chanting peans TO the war
Emerson and Hawthorne listening the while-as
"the armed angel which was Weakening the Nation
to lofty life unknown before" How different
form this poetic far-away conception OF war
the actual fighting as she had seen It:
Il had come up from the border where
had seen the actual war: the filthy spewings
of 1t; the political jobbery In Union and Con-
federate camps: the malignant personal hat
reds wearing patriotic masks, and glutted
by burning homes and outraged women: the
chances in It. we'll improved on both sides
Tor british men to grow more british. and
for honorable men to degenerate into thieve4 -
and sots. War may be an armed angel. ~ith
mission, bbtssne hae Il personal habits
OF the sums."
The real effect of upon National develop
ment and vitality has been more clearly set forth
by David Starr Jordan in an address delivered
last year:
The survival of the fttest in the struggle
Tor existence is The primal moving cause OF
race progress and OF race changes In the
red stress OF human history, this natural pro-
cess OF selection is sometimes reversed
reversal OF selection is the beginning of deg
radiation. 1t is degradation itself The only
race degradation ever known is that produced
Wy those iorces which destroy the best, leav-
ing lor the fathers of the future those who
could not be used in the business OF war or
IN that OF colonization. The effects OF emf
grafton are on a parallel with the effects of
war, but with this enormous difference. the
strong men who emgrate are not lost to tho
world. The loss of one region 10 the gain
VI ahother' But the losses OF war can yield
no corresponding gain. The warlike Na,ton
OF to-day Is the decadent Nation OF ,o-mor-
row, 1t has ever been SO and in the nature
OF things must be ever"