The Republican journal., 1914-12-31
FRO SALE BY YOUR GROCER
A CLOSE VIEW OF WAR.
TRiGdeford Journal

nave haQ tn 'lr Ilftle Joke dt tne expense
of Richard Harding Davis, as they as
sumo, the fact remains that this popular
writer has the knsck of writing in such
manner as to take grip on the inter
est of the reader at the start and hold it
10 the finish. AS d war correspondent
be may net be in the same class with the
Old fellows who were popularity supposed
to write their stories on the head of
drum while the cannon balls were blowing
up the ground all around them and the
bullets were whizzing around their ears,
| but Davis has seen several wars and
knows enough about it to distinguish be-
tween the sound of small-arm fire and
the boom and crash of heavy artillery.
Moreover, he has had the experience
which enables him to get close to the
heart of things, so that he writes of
ca lses as interestingly as be describes
effects.
For this reason everybody who is in
terested in the war row IN progress IN
Europe should read Davis rev book,
with theAllies, written from the stand
point of trained observer in fairly close
touch not only with headquarters but
with the situation on the fring-line. Mr..
Davis wants it derstood at the very
start that he is not neutral; in fact, he
implies that nobody who has seen the
things he has seen could be neutral. On
this point he says:
Il have not seen the letter addressed by
President Wilson to the American people
calling upon them to preserve toward
this war the neutral attitude of neutrals.
But | have seen the war. And feel
sure had President Wilson seen the war
he would not have written his letter."
And he proceeds to explain by declar-
ing that this is not war against Ger
mans, as we know Germans in this coun-
try, where they are among our sanest
and most industrious fellow-citizens. but
against the military aristocracy of Ger
many; in other words, against men who
are six hundred years behind the times;
men who, to preserve their class against
democracy, have perverted to the uses
of warfare, to the destruction of life,
every invention of modern times. Mr..
Davis says that anybody returning to
this country from the European war
zone is astonshed to find how little of
the true horror of the conflict has crossed
the ocean. That this is so, he explains,
is due partly to the strict censorship
which has suppressed details and partly
to the fact that the mind is not accus-
LoIISd " SoDoldeA IllloSly Oi a SSoiC ~
gigantic, and the loss of hundreds of
thousands of lives, the wrecking of cities
and the laying waste of half of Europe
cannot be brought home to people who
learn of it only through newspapers and
moving pictures and by sticking pins in
a map. We're they nearer to it, near
enough to see the women and the children
fleeing for their lives, to hear the detona-
ton of the bursting shells and ''to smell
the dead on the battlefields, there would
be no talk of neutrality.
Were the conflict in Europe fair fight,
Mr.. Davis says, it would be the duty of
every American to keep on the side-lines
and preserve an open mind. But it is
not fair fight. To devastate a country
you have sworn to protect, to drop bombs
on unfortified cities, ito strew sunken
mines along the coasts, to levy whole
sale blackmail by threatening hostages
with death, to destroy historic ,cathedrals
and architectural masterpieces, is not
fair fighting, And that is the way Ger
many is fighting, defying the rules of
war and the rules of humanity. He con-
tinues:
And if public opinion is to help in pre-
venting further outrages, and in hasten
ing this unspeakable conflict to an end,
it should be directed against the one who
ofends. If we are convinced that one op-
ponent is fighting honestly and that his
adversary is striking below the belt, then
for US to maintain neutral attitude If
mind is unworthy and the attitude of a
coward. When mad dog runs amuck in
village it is the duty of every farmer
to get his gun and destroy it, not to lock
himself indoors and toward the dog and
men who face him preserve neutral
mind"
This is the language of man who is
no mere sentimentalist; man physical
ly and mentally hardened by life of
adventure and who knows by ex-
perience in several wars something
of the possibilities of human brutal
ity; and he finds in this war enough
of hideous and Outrageous cruelty to inclte
him to an Indignation deeper than he
ever before felt or attempted to express
even in his widest flights of imagination.
AS sort of insert in his picture OF hu-
man suffering, he describes the ruin and
the havoc at Rheims and concludes:
''War is only waste. The German en-
peror thinks it is thousands of men in
flashing breastplates at maneuvers, gal
looping past him, shouting, 'Hoch der
kaiserp Until this year that is all of war
he has even seen. | have seen lot of
it, and real war is his high-born officer
with his eyes shot out, his peasant SOL
diers with their toes sticking stiff1y
through the straw and the windows of
Rheims, that for centuries with their
beauty glorifed the Lord, swept into
dust heap"