Willmar tribune. [volume] (Willmar, Minn.) 1895-1931, 1914-11-18

Knots Of silent endurance. Our only
continuing sound was the persistent
mewing Of cat one Of the men had
rescued from fouting hayrick near
Zaandam. We kept southwark
course by watch chain compass
Myths had produced.
II do not think any Of us felt we be.
longed to Il defeated army. nor had
we any strong sense Of the war as the
dominating fact about us. Our mental
setting had far more of the effect Of
huge natural catastrophe. The atomic
bomb had dwarfed the international is
sues to complete insignificance When
our mind wandered from the preoccu
patiOns Of our immediate needs we
specialized upon the possibility of stop
ping the use of these frightful explo-
Sives before the world was utterly de-
stroyed, for to us it seemed quite plain
that these bombs and the still greater
power of destruction Of which they
were the precursors might quite easily
shatter every relationship and institu-
ton of mankind.
"'What will they be doing?' asked
Mylius What will they be doing? It's
plain we've got to put an ena to war
It's plain things have to be run some
other way. This-all this-is impossi-
ble.'
II made no immediate answer Some
thing-I cannot think what--had
brought back to me the figure of that
man l had seen wounded on the very
first day Of actual fighting. saw
again his angry, fearful eyes and that
poor, dripping. bloody mess that had
been skillful human hand five min
utes before. thrust out in indignant
protest. ID fooleryr he had storm
ed and sobbed. ID foolery! My
right hand, sir; my right hand!'
my faith had for time gone alto
gether out Of me. 4 think We are too
too silly l said to Mylius, ever to
stop war. If we'd had the sense to
do it we should have done it before
this. think th1s'-and I pointed to
the gaunt outline Of smashed wind
mill that stuck up, ridiculous and ugly.
above the blood lit waves-'this is the
end"
But now our history must part COM
pany with Frederick Barnet and his
barge load of hungry and starving
men.
For time in western Europe at
least it was indeed as If civilization
had come to final collapse. These
browning buds upon the tradition that
Napoleon planted and Bismarck water
ed opened and Jared like water lilies
Of fame" over nations destroyed, over
churches smashed or submerged, towns
ruined, fields lost to mankind forever
and a million weltering bodies. Was
this lesson enough for mankind or
would the flames Of war still burn
amidst the ruins?
Neither Barnet nor his companions.
it is clear, had any assurance in their
answers to that question. Already
once in tue history of mankind in
America, before its discovery by the
whites, an organized civilization had
given way to mere cult of warfare,
specialized and cruel. and it seemed
for a time to many a thoughtful man
as If the whole world was but to re-
peat on larger scale this ascendancy
Of the warrior, this triumph Of the
destructive instincts Of the race ~
The subsequent chapters of Barnet's
narrative do but supply body to this
tragic possibility. He gives a series
Of vignettes of civilization shattered,
it seemed, almost trreparably. He
found the Belgian hills swarming with
refugees and desolated by cholera; the
vestiges of the contending armies
| keeping order under truce-without
I actual battles, but with the cautious
hostility of habit and great absence
| of plan everywhere.
Overhead aerOplanes went on mystic
rious errands, and there were rumors
of cannibalism and hysterical fanati-
c1sms in the valleys of the Semoy and
! the forest region of the eastern Ar
| dennes. There was the report of an
| attack upon Russia by the Chinese and
Japanese and Of some huge revolution
| airy outbreak in America The wealth
| er was stornlier than men had ever
known it in those regions, with much
thunder and lightning and wild cloud
bursts of rain.
| ITO he cOntinna6\