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


terest when delivered at the Dallas
chautauqua that The Observer feels
justified in producing it in its en-
tirety. The address was originally
delivered at the fourth National
Peace Congress at st. Louis in 1918
at which time it was given world
wide notice. The address follows:
If money is the measure of economic
value, civilization is standing today
face to, face with its most stupen-
dous problem. Sixty-fve per cent of
the entire income of the civilized
world was lavished during the last
year upon single object, an object
that, by common consent, stands very
low in the scale of moral appraise-
ment
Whatever may have been the glory
of the lost arts or the splendor of the
Atlantis, we love to persuade ourselves
these days that our generation is at
least writing some new chapters in
the history of enlightenment. Our
age is instinct with attainment 1t
devises decorations for those who bend
the cosmic forces of the universe anew
to the will of man.
1t enriches fertile furrows; changes
fruit and flowers to richer beauty and
fragrance, and reaps redoubled har-
vests with the pruning-hooks of skill
ed capacity.
1t rids the world of slavery; cleans
es the putrid pools of pestilence; res
cues humanity from the age-long
bondage of pain, disease, and death.
1t has laid the ghosts of fear and
bigotry; eliminated error; boldly chal-
lenged ancient sophistry; emancipated
thought; flung wide the portals of un-
fettered research. All this and more
is the motif of the twentieth century.
Added to a wise philosophy, joined
with fraternal cooperation, it ought
to be the dynamic measure of an
Age of Gold. To its furtherance
there should be given the best and
highest constructive and conservative
forces of the world. But iconoclasm
has possessed the better Judgment of
the world. A vampire philosophy is
sucking the life blood of lofty purpose.
Civilization today lauds and dec
crates her ages; but an age unequaled
among the centuries in incalculable
treasure still sends its scholars to
search in stinted squalor; chains in
vestigation with insufliciency; prog
ress pines in poverty; earth s largest,
loftiest longings languish in impotent
indigence, while civilization pours un-
counted millions at the shrine of raw
ening savagery, and wastes the sub
stance of its people in the murderous
enginery Of war.
During f912 the nations spent two
billion. two hundred and fifty millions
of dollars ($2, 2,250, 0,000,0O0) in the ere
alton of military and naval armament.
Since history began to be written,
it is estimated that fifteen billion men
have died as result of battle. Such
figures are beyond the possibility of
our normal conception. Our Saviour
was born nineteen centuries ago. From
the moment that the newborn Child
lay in the manger cradle in Bethle-
hem until now, there have been barely
one billion minutes. Fifteen billion
men means all the human beings that
have lived in the world for six hun
dred years, counting three genera
tions to century. That many men
have died in war.
During the nineteenth century alone
14,O00,O00 men died as result of
battle, and it cost the world forty-two
thousand million dollars for their tax
ing off. And as the result of all that
stupendous price of life and treasure
there stands but little great achieve
ment recorded for the common good. |
On the ledger pages of history there
are few great accomplishments to bal
ance the awful account It meant for
the most part simply change of
masters or a contest over the boun-
daries of adjacent States-the graft
fication of envy, jealousy. and hatred:
the bloody enthusiasm of mere phvsi-
cal victory! Of course, the great Civ
il War in America effected the eman-
cipation of millions of negro slaves;
but with the money that that war cost
us, the actual outlay. to say nothing
of the price of myriad of lives or
Of the awful heritage that after fifty
years still remains to vex and trouble
us, we might have bought, paid for,
educated, and endowed every slave
forty times over.
And yet. with the awful experience
IF history to make us wise, there is a
type of so-called craftsmanship that
still insists that war is tenable be-
5ween civilized nations. Not war.
mind you, as an absolutely frank.
purpose of destruction.
There are few, save those who by a
policy we have educated and
rained in the gentle art of killing.
who would justify the world s ancient
'avagery and find in its bloody cruelty
IN ideal of courage. To justify itself
he age has invented a new delusion. l
War in its grim reality. is the sole ,
survivor of medieval barbarism. Ev- ]
.rything else has been banished We