Ashland tidings. [volume] (Ashland, Or.) 1876-1919, 1914-08-17

combat the president of the Diamond
Dye Works because Hams whiskers
are said to resemble the aurora bore
alis.
Russia, Germany, France, Austria,
Servia, England-and maybe before
it is over all the powers of the earth
engaging in mortal combat; spend
ing millions of treasure; spilling
oceans of blood; filling the land with
woe and sorrow-and all for what?
Nothing except to crafty little
pride; a little vanity-simply the
strutting of a vain and pompous ruler
who imagines that because he has
under his control a few million hu-
man beings, he can sacrifice them to
give his country little more terri
tory, or humiliate, or subject to
shame a nation that he doesn't par
ticularly fancy.
This is happening-not three or
five thousand years ago in a period
of time which we denominate as the
Dark Ages-but it is happening right
now-in this year of grace, A. d.
! 1914-when we had a right to pre-
sumo that civilization had reached at
/ least the highest point in the history
of the world.
So what does it argue? Why not
| 90 back, or, indeed, have We pro-
! gressed one single, solitary step from
the savagery of Cain-have We, in the
six thousand long and dreary years
since it was thundered from Mount
Sinai, Thou shalt not kill'-made
one step forward from the dominant
force of that primal law which seems
+, implanted in the breast of man,
which manifests itself in war and in
business, and which is, briefly stated,
Take all that is in sight; might
makes right?
In the old days the Spartan mother
reared her son to be soldier-in the
old days war was a profession, and
men gloried in it-but in this age,
this age of talked of universal peace !;
this age of The Hague; of the Nobel
peace prize; this age when the best
that is in us, intellectually, is con-
centrated on the great question oil
universal peace-when wars shall be
= no more-to attempt to comprehend
! that over night in the European capi-
j tails n war greater than the world has
: ever known has been successfully SET
e in motion, is such an astounding
9 such a bewildering, such a stagger'
I ing proposition that reason stands ap'
e palled and the human intellect fails
to grasp the serious significance oi
e the situation.
/ Why not back to breech clouts ant
l. crude bows and arrows with poisoned
: flints? Why not back to the caves
It and the chattering of crawling men
e Why the progress in wonderful in
J. ventions of guns and bombs and bat
g tleships and aeroplanes-if it be onl,
u to make war more terrible and de
r struction more certain? Where hav
d we progressed? If only in invention
1t and that invention to depopulate
"a world; to plunder and lay waste cit
re les; to bring desolation and ruin /
r. happy and contented homes; to dt
molish temples and palaces; to mul
ly der men by the thousands with a sir
n gle gun; to outrage decency and vii
n tue-to turn to disorder and anarch
SIS and chaos the society we thought "
s. had well in hand?
s, What the good of all these veal
r. of progression-these dark nigh
ne and days of research and informi
10 ton? What the use to patiently to
at and struggle to put on the canvas tn
h picture of Peace, and shoot ho
through the picture with twelv
Id inch gun?
IS How are we today one step fartht
IN from the bonds of savagery and lu'
a. of ambition and conquest than W;
RS the founder of the Babylonian en-
to pire-who took all that was in sigl
TO or how much more humane are til
ID actors in this great world drama Jul
lie staged and now in action than wei
ir the train of Caesars, Alexanders, Hal
ID nibals, Fredericks and Bonapartes
t. Not one single solitary step. The
(: fought their wars of conquest-an
n we fight ours.
at For fifty years this war cloud hi
ry been sighted by the strategists
1t war; the world has looked for
ne sooner-but so stupendous an ente
ry prise was finally deemed impractic
OF ble-yet it broke out over night
ty and closed the stock markets of 6
entire world-and sent to financi
ce destruction a million men. SO mu,
'st greater are our commercial interest
We SO interviewer and entwined our col
ce mercial relations with the who
res world-at this period than when {
lg world was new-that little flur