The Birmingham age-herald., 1914-10-03
WAR ECHOES

1 Egyptian marble, where rest at laSL the
 ashes of that restless man. leaned over
 the balustrade and thought about the ca
 reer of the greatest soldier of the mod | ern world.
 T saw him walking upon the banks of
 the Seine, contemplating suicide. I saw
 him at Toulon. I saw him putting down
 the mob in the streets of Paris. l saw 1 him in the shadow of the Pyramids,
 saw him at the head of the army of Italy. I saw his crossing the bridge Of
 Lodi with the tricolor in his hand. l saw him fin Egypt in the shadow of the pyra-
 nids, I saw him conquer the Alps and
 mingle the eagles of France with the eagles of the crags I saw him at Ma rengo, at Ulm and Austerlitz. I saw him ! in Russia, where the infantry of the snow 1 and the cavalry of the wild blast scat | tered his legions like winters withered | leaves. l saw him at Leipzig in defeat and disaster, driven by million bayonets back upon Paris-clutched like a wild beast-banished to Elba. I saw him escape and retake an empire by the force of his genius- saw him upon the fright fui field of Waterloo. where chance and fate combined to wreck the fortunes of
 their former King, and saw him at St. Helena, with his hands crossed behind him, gazing out upon the sad and sol emn sea
 he had made, of the tears that had been shed for his glory and of the only woman who ever loved him. pushed from his heart by the cold hand of ambition. And said I would rather have been d French peasant and worn wooden shoes. would rather have lived in hut with vine growing over the door and the grapes growing purple in the kisses of the autumn sun. l would rather have been that poor peasant with my loving wife by my side, knitting as the day died out of the sky-with my children upon my
 knees and their arms about me. l would rather have been that man and gone down to the tongueless silence of the dream less dust than to have been that imperial impersonation of force and murder Philadelphia Public Ledger: From Lou vain comes the epithet, "A veritable Pom- peii ii'-graphic, but faulty. Pompeii fell
 suddenly, beneath that rain of geologic
 hell. There is little resemblance. And hCithcl IS tHtIt dfly ClOSt T6SefflDldnCe De-
 tween the disaster at Louvain and the windborne horror that to frequently de- yours our American cities. Consider. At Chicago, at Baltimore, at San Fran cisco, at Chelsea, or at Salem, you could set fire going, as Henry Ward Beecher said of his mouth. and then go off and leave it." Destiny (and shingles) did the rest
 At Louvain. on the contrary, destiny fought hard against conHagration. h. cendiarism was long. slow, painstaking task, deliberate and laborious. Arson proceeded coolly from street to street. from stone house to stone house, almost from room to room. Nothing in the citys construction invited fire. Sparks alighted on tiles not finder. Once a building was set ablaze, partitions of brick or stone delayed the progress of the fire. Gu riously, the builders of continental cities seem to have had no desire whatever to see them burn; whereas, in America =. But bear with us further. When you
 hear the fire department hustllng through continental city, 1t never occurs to you | that something may be on fire. You in- fer a fallen scaffold or sewer caved in, or possibly burst water main, and generally you are right. The only fire to be considered seriously Is a blazing chimney, and in that case up scampers Hans or Jullot by the nearest stairway to spill down sand from the box on the roof
 A moral here. However, we cherish too
 much reverence for the wits of our be- loved county to rub it in.
 Washington Post: The question Of con trol of such great waterways as the Dardanelles and the Kiel canal is likely to assume importance when the time comes for making peace in Europe. The reported demand by Russia that Turkey should demobilize or be prepared to fight
 Is the possible forerunner of hostiitfes
 which may involve the powers in discus sion as to the eventual control of the
 Dardaneles. Russia is seeking better out lets to the sea, and is anxious to secure
 control of ice-free harbors. The cautious
 moves now being made in the Balkans in-
 dicate that Roumania may be drawn into
 the war, in which event Turkey Is al- most certain to follow suit The decision as to peace or war is now before the Roumanian cabinet, and all of the min isters save one are said to be in favor of war on the side of the allies, the objective
 being the recovery of territory from Aus ria-Hungary which Roumania has al- ways regarded as her own. It is conjec-
 tured in some quarters that Russia and
 England, now that they are allies. might
 come to terms which would permit of the
 free use of the Dardanelles by Russia.
 The defeat of Germany by the allied
 powers would probably throw the Kiel
 canal open to the world under an inter-
 national agreement of neutrality, similar
 to that which keeps the Suez canal open
 to commerce. The people of Denmark
 are restive under present conditions, and
 are anxious to recover the provinces of
 Schleswig- -Holstein, which are as Danish
 now in sympathy as they were before
 their acquisition by Germany. Presum-
 ably determined effort would be made to transfer this territory back to Dem
 mark in case of German defeat, and pos- sibly the Kiel canal would pass to the control of Denmark, subject to interna- tional rules of neutrality
 This war; like most others, has seen the tearing up of treaties, but the con science of the world has shown it's de- termined objection to such a procedure
 even under the excuse of military neces- sity. It is doubtful whether Germany It~~l.<