The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1914-10-19
BY EDGAR llIEE,

Dreamers of universal peace may
now read again the words of Plato.
"All states are in perpetual war with
all. For that which we call peace is
more than merely a name, whilst In
reality nature has set all communities
in an unprecedented but everlasting
war with each other"
Amid the multiplicity Of books and
histories, bearing directly or remotely
upon the European war, the searcher
for light stands both amazed and
puzzled. If he wishes to trace conflict
pathologically, seeking the nature,
causes, progress and symptoms OF the
disease, he finds himself confronted
with an enormous task. He must go
back years, centuries, ages. Even the
very beginnings OF the Saxon, German,
and Slav races are lamps whose dim
light casts some reflection upon these
peoples now struggling for survival.
If we blame Kaiser Wilhelm, or
King George, the President Of France
or the Car of Russia, we are wide Of
the mark. They are personally no
more to blame than they would be
were the earth to violently shift its
axis and cause a tragic cataclysm.
No Ruler to Blame.
Albert Bushnell Hart, professor of
history at Harvard university, says
that "The responsibility of this war
rests upon no individual and upon no
one nation, but upon the interlocking
of Europe, commercially, territOrially
and socially, so that one power after
another was drawn in the maelstrom.
No monarch can go against the spirit
of his people. Every country in this
war is united in what Is considered a
natural war 1t is not a war Of dynas-
ties or statesmen or military leaders.
1t is not war of revenge for the
death Of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
This is a war of peoples"
Field Marshal Won Moltke declares
in the opening of his History of the
Franco-German War;" written in 1887:
1T Is no longer the ambition of mon
archs which endangers peace, but the
impulses of nation, it's dissatisfac-
ton with it's internal conditions, the
strife of parties and the intr1gues OF
their leaders. Today the question is
not SO much whether a nation is
strong enough to make war as whether
its government is powerful enough to
prevent war. The great wars of re-
cent times have been declared against
the wish and will of the reigning
powers
Contention Continues.
We have still further calculation OF
| war in General Homer Lees The Day
of the Saxon" when the author says:
There is no line of demarcation be.
| tween peace and war. In all the
struggles of the human race we are
| unable to determine with exactitude
| the beginning of single war. Inter
national war has no beginning and nc
end, so long as mankind brings himself
| together in political and individual
contention. Whether it is for good OF
for evil, this everlasting struggle
| forms the necessary motif of human
aspiration. Between a spider slipping
his web from twig to leaf and mar
threading his nets from threshold tt
threshold, between nest OF ants bJ
the roadside and a tribe of men upor
a greater way, there is no difference
Individual strife is the epitome Of self
ishness: war is gigantic altruism."
| In seeking more light upon this con
test Of the people of France, Germany
England and Russia. l read over agar
the book "Slav or Saxon" by William
Dudley Foulke, written or published
twenty-seven years ago, in 1887. Thi:
was the year Won Moltke was writing
his memoirs of the Franco-Germar
war. l read this book again because
l distinctly remembered that i
prophesied the ultimate clash between
England and Russia and the final IN
premacy of either Slav or Saxon in the
world. The present alliance between
England and Russia, between Slav anc
Saxon, between the powers Of ngh
and the powers of darkness, between
civilization and barbarism. between
constitutional government md infa
nous affstocraoy, led me to once nor,
read Mr.. Foulke's spirited denukeia