The Ocala banner. (Ocala, Marion County, Fla.) 1883-194?, 1911-06-30
THE PERILs or THE AGE OF
PEACE

heading
Just what is the real purport of
the article we confess that we do
not understand although we perused
it with unusual care.
AS text for his article the bishop
quotes an extract from a noted orator
exalting the blessings of peace and
denouncing the evils of war.
The extract follows:
Give me the money that has been
spent in war, and l will purchase
every foot of land upon the globe. |
will clothe every man, woman and
child in an attire of which kings and
queens would be proud. | will build
schOolhouse on every hillside, and
in every valley over the whole earth;
l will build an academy in every
town and endow it: a college in every
state and fill it with able professors;
will crowd every hill with place OF
worship, consecrated to the promul-
CATION of the gospel of peace; will
support in every pulpit an 'able
teacher of righteousness, so that on
every Sabbath morning the chime on
one hill should answer TO the chime
on another round the earth's wide
circumference, and the voice of
prayer and the song of praise should
ascend like an universal anthem TO
heaven"
The bishop says that whilst the
orators words are, perhaps, just
statement of the wastefulness of war,
it is easy to draw from them an in
ference that is misleading, i. e., to i'm
agine that when the nations learn war
no more that all the multiplied mil
lions will be turned at once into be-
nevolent channels which he suggests.
This, says the bishop, is far from
true.
In contradistinction to what the or
ator has said, and the picture he has
drawn, the bishop draws one of an en-
tirely different coloring.
He says that for very truth an era
of peace is especially beset by the
perils of self-indulgence and sensual
ity,
To bolster up this statement he
quotes from an address from John
Ruskin. which was delivered at the
Royal Military Academy at Woolwich
some years ago. In the course of that
address Mr.. Ruskin said:
The common notion that peace and
the virtues of civil life flourish togeth-
er, l find to be wholly untenable.
Peace and the vices of civil life only
flourish together We talk of peace
and learning, and of peace and plenty,
and of peace and civilization. | find
that these are not the words which
the muse of history couples together:
that on her lips the words are peace
and sensuality, peace and selfishness,
peace and corruption, peace and
death. ! find in brief that all great
nations have learned their truth of
word, and strength of thought in war,
that they have been nourished in
war, and wasted by peace; trained by
war and betrayed by peace; in
word. that they were born in war and
expired in peace"
The bishop forswears that he is not
quoting Ruskin as an argument for
war, and certainly not to chill in the
slightest degree the prevailing senti-
ment for international peace, which
is manifesting itself so strikingly in
our own and other lands. But he
says that we must not shut our eyes
to the fact that peace has its perils
no less dangerous than war. He
quotes from Mr.. Gladstone, showing
how enormously our wealth increas-
ed from 1850 to 1870, but says that
the increase between those years are
as nothing compared to the increase
since those dates.
The bishop says that just in proper
ton as we have grown rich the spirit
of heroic self-sacrifice has decayed,
and quotes Pliny as saying: "Ayarice
and luxury have been the ruin of ev-
cry great state That Herodotus de-
clared: 1T is law Of nature that
men should he the fruit
of luxurious countries for we never
find that the same soil produces deli
cacies and heroes"
Then, dissenting upon the sinful
ness of aristocracy, the bishop asks:
What shall we do about the matter?
Shall we advocate war as a sort of
blood-letting process TO save US from
the delirium of mammonism?"
No, the bishop would not go that
far, but he leaves the inference that
self-indulgence, luxury and licentious-
ness only flourish in times of fruitful
peace, and do not flourish in times of
devastating war.
Such ale not the facts. In times of
war all restraints are set at defiance,
and one gives loose reins to his pas
sions. Theft and debauchery in their
worst forms follow in the train, and
are the legacy of war
We utterly deny and set at defiance
the statements of Mr.. Ruskin that