Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1914-08-25
PRESS OPINIONS
"PUT UP THY SWORD."
Memphis Commercial Appeal1

When, in the shadows of Gethsem- ane, Christ said to the angry Peter: Put up thy sword" He made the. dis ciple the type of warning nations. The command was admonition for patience and forbearance, the first direct order for universal peace.
 Suppose the days of miracles could come back, and that from somewhere out of the heavens, cleaving the crys- tai spaces, that gentle voice could say aloud to the war-craZed hosts, killing each other on already historic battle grounds: Put up your swords" What magnetic silence, what a blessed peace there would Iall upon the world. Roses would grow up in the death trenches and the cannon's throat would fill with rust. Men would turn in abhorrence from their task of killing; and the voice Of Rachel, heard throughout the land, would be voice of singing for he. children saved.
 For, alter all, what is war, a:ll what are the fruits thereof?
 "War is glory" say the leaders, and the enlisted men. stirred to d passion of enthusiasm, follow the throb of the drums to where the ban ners blossom in the sky-and are fed as so much carrion to the vultures of destruction. War is glory, but for the few; for the many it is pain and anguish and annihilation.
 And the fruits of war?
 To the soldier in the ranks, not so h <~G I l.. IL. his loved ones may plant the rose mark that is for memory" but to rot in trench, where hundreds Of his unnamed comrades lie, one more clod returned to dust.
 To the leaders, if they are success full. the fruits are a little flattery, q little Haunting of flags and then "six feet of English ground" a mausol- cum under the Grecian Sky, dag gers thrust at the foot of Pompey's statute, a death-bed in a far sea-girt prison under alien stars. And, after these, a line in history?
 This war has already made it's sac rifice of life, poured out it's full liba- tlon of blood to Mars. Belgium has once more become vertible Golgotha "a place of skulls"-half of France is in mourning. and all of Germany weeps on her doorsteps. The end | can be only a few bloodstained laur- els, few rods of territory. one side | or the other: and to offset these an estopped scientific progress, ruined | commerce. thousands of widows and orphans and desolate homes, and the bitter racial hatreds that will be handed down, even unto the third and fourth generations of them who hated peace.
 And all of this hideous pain anl passion and sorrow and sacrifice for what?
 To test the war strength of leaders and rulers who had ground their peo- pie on the wheel of militarism for q quarter of century. For Europe had no reason to fight; she had her \ treaties and her aaws of arbitration
 but because she had the guns and the
 ships she forgot her obligations tc
 science and civilization. to the God o peace and to the mothers of men.
 The miracle of reconciliation vii l not come in a week Or a month for the time of miracles has past But when it does come men vii stand aghast at their own bloody work. and ashamed that they needed not the command spoken to then , through the person of Peter tha memorable night nearly 2O0O year, ago: Put up thy sword; for all the!
 that take he sword shall perish witl
 the sword"