Polk County observer. (Monmouth, Polk County, Or.) 1888-1927, 1914-07-17

going to say: eco on gentlemen, &C
on. Declare war if you want to; but
also understand if you declare wal
now, you can do the fighting your
selves. We have nothing to fghl
about We are content as we are
We have homes and our wives anc
our children. Go away, and let us
alone! We have nothing to fght
about. Do your fighting yourselves. .
There are several things that the
entering as essential dynamics into
the solution of some of our present
problems.
First and most far-reaching is the
emancipation and the enfranchisement
of women. The day has dawned
when men will no longer dare to deny
to woman what is hers by the divinely
bestowed birthright of her woman
hood--the right of having a voice in
determining what kind of a world it
is to be in which the sons and daugh-
ters shall live whom she perils her life
to bring into the world. Women don It
go down into the dark valley and
the shadow of death, and though long
hours of anguish stand face to face
with grizzly terror, to give birth to
sons whose end it shall be to dress
themselves in some ones tinsel uni
form and make targets of their bodies
for the bullets of selfish ambition.
When woman comes into her own,
wars, believe me, will be few and
mighty far between.
And the world, too, is breaking
away from that philosophy of lies,
made sacrosanct by centuries of US
ance-a philosophy behind which has
stood what men have falsely called re-
ligion-that has taught that God
meant the world to be what it has
been-that some men should be high
and other men should be low; some
men should be rich and other men
poor; that some men should be mas
ters, and the rest of us just men.
The world is breaking with that sort
of ecclesiastical tommy-rot. God nev-
er did anything of the kind. And as
men come to grasp and understand the
divine communism of the carpenters
Son of Nazareth, as men begin to
comprehend the Universal Fatherhood
of God, there will come the deep,
wide social gospel of human brother
hood, and the world battalions will
become invincible guardians of peace
the guarantors of every man s right
to life and to an even chance to live.
But last year the so-called civilized
nations spent $2,250,OOO,OOO in prep
aration for war. This year it will
probably be $4,000 100000. That is
more than 40 per cent increase in the
past thirty years, and the increase
has been largely during the last de-
cade.
Let the same increase go on-and
with growing rivalry it will be far
larger during the next decade-and it
will demand the present total income
of civilization-and that means eco
nomic bankruptcy-the destruction of
the very foundation upon which or
ganized society rests. So the nations
rage. There seems no possible stop
ping place. Behind them is a crazed,
resistless force; before them yawns
the Stygian abyss of destruction.
Let it be understood that in the dis
cussion of such a question as this a
radical distinction must be observed
between the dominant nations of Eur
ope and the United States of Ameri-
"a. With them conditions are by
force of circumstance, and the neces-
sity that grips them is the result Of
environment. They are the
legatees of centuries of struggle, the
creatures of hereditary rivalry, jeal-
Ousy, and inborn antipathy.
Out of a unique environment of alb
solute self-sufficiency we are still,
thank God, the architects of our own
fortunes. Our relations, our attitude
to the great problems of interna-
tional economy are still not matters
IF necessity, but of deliberate choice.
What the United States is today, what
t will be tomorrow, is still in the
Providence of God what she chooses to
De.
Alone among the nations we are in
| peculiar sense self-determining
PEOPLE. England, for example, raises
,nly a small per cent of what her
'eople eat. Much of her food supply
he purchases outside her boundary
ines, and she must bring it across
'ceans and over the channel, protected
Igainst foreign attack and confiscation.
n Germany the per cent of food
upply and raw material for her man.
fractures produced at home is smaller
till. In both England and Germany
IMPORTS are largely in excess of ex-
'orts-and both England and Ger
many make vast demands upon the
urplus production of the United {
'tates. There is the unique protection I
{ the American flag. There is the
defense of this Repub- {
c that we love. Not its eminent do $
lain, so vast that even winged imagi-
alton cannot compass its tremendous 5
xpanse. Not its resources, incalcul- q
bic. and scarcely yet touched in their !
evelopment, but the fact that Amer c