The Wahpeton times. [volume] (Wahpeton, Richland County, Dakota [N.D.]) 1879-1919, 1910-03-31
FATAL TO PROGRESS
GRAVE DANGER IN MAKING LIFE
TOO EASY.
Mans Energies and Usefulness De.
! veIoped by struggIe-History Shows
I Unwisdom Of the Paternai Sys.
! tenn Of Government.

What sort of creature would man
become if an omnipresent, powerful,
protecting influence watched over him
in his walks and his rides, at his play
and at his work.! Would not the man
so treated as child soon become
thoughtless and improvident as a
child, -confiding for all the good of
life in the protection accorded him
and finally claiming it as a right and
its withdrawal as crime? Remem.
Der that while it may be- permitted to
doubt whether the monkey became
the man by struggle and the expert
ence OF years, we yet know that the
savage has developed into the civilized
man by the survival of the fittest, by
the elimination of the weak, and that
the rule seems to hold good in the
mental and moral kingdoms as we'll
as In the ruder and more strenuous
battles Of the muscles.
The legions enforced the Roman
peace upon the world, and what fol-
lowed? Civilization grew soft and
corrupt-the superiority of its arms
and its knowledge proved insufficient
to protect 1t, and from the icy forests
of the north swept the storm of saw.
age strength and brute force, declares
writer in the New Orleans Picayune.
Miracles could not save the church
when armies failed the throne; all for
which man had labored for centuries
was swept away, and darkness brood.
ed over Europe till another beginning
could be founded on the relics of the
old. Is peace desirable? Enough of
doubt fingers in the question to make
US careful how we give to law for the
individual the protecting care that
seems fatal to mans energies and use.
fulness in the mass.
If we could eliminate from civiliza.
ton the sports that main or slay, the
drinks or foods that injure, the naked.
ness that leaves disease behind, and
the poisoned airs that slay at hand,
can we be sure that man would be
saved and not annihilated? Once civ.
ilization set the church in the position
Of responsibility only to learn that
even the church could play the tyrant;
shall we trust science after the failure
Of the church?
Our ancestors began to look for a
savage foe behind every tree as soon
as the boy set out with a rife to find
the meat for the breakfast table; we
find football game too dangerous for
our sons. In contempt of germs and
microbes the soldier of yesterday
marched out to the field of battle and
kept stout heart; now he dies before
he can leave his own soil and we up.
lift our hands in prayer, knowing that
the microbe Is too powerful for US.
The southern soldier of the Cos faced
armies whose recruiting ground en-.
braced the world, and he kept them.
back for four long years till he was
stricken in the rear: now the authori.
ties Of the national army report that
the southern recruit Is UNIT because
he has the book worm now or suffered
from It in his youth.
We do not despise the triumphs Of
morality and science-if we must be
taxed for protection we must accept
it, seeming benefits. But sometimes
we wonder what pleasure will be left
boy whose peaches must be steri.
liked, whose melons must be bathed.
and whose kisses must be perfumed
from bottle and noxzle before they
can be accepted. s. !,