The Ocala evening star. [volume] (Ocala, Fla.) 1895-1943, 1914-09-01
CAUSES OF THE CONFLICT

A friend of the Star has asked it
10 give the causes and reasons of the
present war-the war that will go
down in history. as THE War" for
there has never been one like it, and
it is to be hoped there never will
be another.
One of Ocala's prettiest young
ladies asked a supposed-to-be wise
old man what they were all fighting
for. He replied that they were fight
ing for pure meanness, and that was
about as accurate a reason as has
been given.
But to go into details, one great
reason is that the peoples of Europe
do not understand each other. and
therefore hate each other; another is,
that Europe has never gotten loose
from the feudal idea that you must
build a stone wall with iron gates
around your property.
On the continent of North America
we have the United States and Can
ada, into which we could put two
Europes. The United States is divid-
ed into forty-eight states, and Canada
into a dozen or more provinces. Tt
is difficult to tell in the United States
when you pass from one state 40 an
other 1t Is difficult to Tell IN Canada
when you passs from one province to
tsx4Tlr,f1..c g~>~lA - 4l,.o - 41o,,,,1,,, \
y~6f miles on the American and Cana
dian boundry line where you can't
tell when you pass from one nation
to another. We all speak common
Language, we are all thoroughly mix
ed i'm religion and we all have rep
resentatiye government, which de-
votes large part of its time to let
ting it's own people alone and nearly
all the rest to not interfering with
the people of any other nation.
IF any of our capitalists want to
build a railroad thousand miles
1ong, they simply ask two or more
states to give them right of way. IF
they want to cross the international
lime, they take very little more
trouble than they would in crossing
a state line. If they want to build
from the interior to tidewater. they
simply secure right of way and ter
animals If they want to put steam
boat line on fifteen hundred or two
tE9rOnsand miles of river, all they have
TO do is to obtain charter in one
sfate and set the boats to running. Or
a man can take his automobile and
run it 1000 miles from Miami, Fla,
TO Victoria, b. c., without any for
nality except stopping five minutes at
che Canadian line for an official to
look him and his machine over in a
perfnnctory manner.
IF we worked on the European
plan, we would have sixty odd gov
.ernments, which would fight till they
swallowed each other into four or six
or a dozen, and these would watch
and fight forever to preserve the bal
ance of power FLORIDA, for instance
cuts large part of Georgia and Ala
bama off from the sea. So it is like
ay that a partition of Florida would
have been made some time ago By
Georgia and Alabama, and then they
would have fought till one conquered
6he other. It is also most likel!
that Tennessee would have conquer
ed Kentucky, or vice versa, and tht
combine nation would have sailed in
10 the Ga-Fla.- ALA. bunch and etthe
annexed it or been annexed, SO Their
would have been nation the size o
Austro-Fungary from the Ohio an
the Mississippi to the gulf and tn
ocean This nation would hav
found Mississippi and Eastern Louisi
ana very inconvenient to it, an
uYould have annexed that territory
Right across the Mississippi it woul
have met Texas, which would hay
gobbled up Western Louisiana an
Arkansas. The Pacific states woul
he in another big nation, and tn
great western states of Missouri
Kansas. Colorado, Nebraska. and on
or two more, would be in another n;
ton, which would be impatient
conquer Texas on the south, or Cal
fornia on the west in order 60 reaC
the sea.
Such would be the style of thinl
FL ahe United States had modelled {
Europe.
That it didn't is owing to the /
oneers. who pushed across the con-
nent, making no lines except wi
the surveyors instruments, and Sc
thing all disputes in the courts
stead of on the battlefield.
In Europe it is different. Exec