The Birmingham age-herald., 1914-12-12
WAR ECHOES

St. Louis Post-Dispatch: News dis patches have told how all the cats In Germany have been doomed to death to provide furs to keep the soldiers in the trenches warm. It seems that catskins are marketable commodity in times of peace. But the vastness of the present war has made a demand for them by wholesale. And every German household is to lose its cat The decree has gone forth. "Felis Germanica delenda est
 A great pity, if true. Many persons set small store by the cat, and yet this little animal deserves some sympathy, for it is usually the children's pet. Worshiped in ancient Egypt under the name Pasht, it has been a f1reside fixture for count less centuries. New York just now has it on exhibition. The New York Sun re- marks:
 Tomorrow the cat show. Dogs have a multitude of friends, but the more or less reformed tigers. with "eIastic and rebel lious hair.' as Baudelaire sang, are per- haps the favorites of the poets. Grace full. epicurean, Bohemian, mysterious and splendid of eye, dainty of person, a pas sionate serenader, a child of night, a watcher of the fire, fattering and fckIe, quick of anger, the cat is the familiar of bards It has the poetic temperament and is subject to fits"
 If Germany is really to lose all it's cats, it may find itself in the condition told of in the nursery tale, and may have to call upon a modern Diok Wilmington to exterminate plague of rats and mice.
 London Dispatch to the Philadelphia Public Ledger: George Bernard Shaw, in a letter to the Daily Dispatch, makes yet another reply to his critics, saying that ''as to the general reception of my pamphlet cCommon Sense About the War), I wish that those who denounce it without having read it would maAe up their minds firmly as to whether I'm 8 negligible person or not If I am, the sensible course is to neglect me, not to fill columns with all sorts of fussings about me, from firm demands that should be subsequently, for high treason to Rus sia-to mere abuse.
 "1f,. on the other hand I am writer of some importance, it clearly is a di- rect playing into the hands of the ene- my to announce in all directions that my pamphlet is Justification of Germany and a declaration that she is in the right in this war. Several English jour nalists are claiming all my weight for the Germans in an insane determination to damage me at any cost, even to that of circulating falsehoods and preventing peo- pie from recruiting (many young men who regard me rightly or wrongly as an oracle have thus been persuaded that am against the war) and obscuring the vital necessity of averting military tri- umph for the Prussan system.
 Worse than the abusive people are the vainglorious people. They seem to believe this war is going to be settled by Englishmen shrieking to the four cor ners of the earth that they are the flower of the human race and the Germans the dregs of creation. This war is going to be settled by blood and iron, and the blood on our side must be the blood of men deeply imbued with the popular Brit ish tradition of life, and implacably re- ton shall not prevail against it either in England or anywhere in the world, even in Prussia itself if they can keep it. Not until we have convinced Prussia that the militarist game is not worth the candle will 1t be time to stop. For not until then shall we have reaped the har- vest of our blood and tears.