The Hood River glacier. (Hood River, Or.) 1889-1933, 1915-11-11
Underwood Bouquets and Brickbats

piled the husband.
Zach, ja." returned the good wife,
always choosing the best for your
self"
Deacon Jones had been confined to
his bed for a long time and could not
attend church. After while he got
out to the prayer. meeting. The leader
of the meeting said: eve want to all
i've good time here tonight and tell
our experiences. There is deacon Jones
the Lord bless him-we have not
seen him for six months. Now deacon
tell US what the good Lord has done
for you.
well, be has about ruined me,
said Jones as he hobbled on crutches
into the aisle.
Some people have as strange and
inept ideas about poetry, heaven, bou-
quets and brickbats as Jones had about
Providence and the German about
heavenly bliss. But when we break
into poetry from spontaneous combus-
tion we can, of course. pardon some
| crude IDEAS, as poets anyhow, are born
| not made.
Several years ago distinguished
NudSutOt vi OICSOl uCCfdtCu tudt tue
conditions Of climate. soil and environ
ment of Oregon and Washington were
suited to the production of the highest
brain power, so that the next Milton
and Shakespeare, the next great orator
| and artist of the race. would be born
here. Certainly from the Underwood
Heights We look down and up to one of
the grandest extravaganzas Of scenery
and breathe the finest ozone TO be
found anywhere on the globe. Thistle
| down has been through the Inland
Passage to Alaska. the Inland Sea of
Japan. all up and down the Rhine,
| along the Hudson, through the Yellow
stone and the Grand Canyon of the
| Colorado in Arizona, but right in front
of us where rolls the Oregon and hears
the thunder of conn cree as we'll as its
own dashing we have the gem of all
beauty. power and inspiration. The
mighty gorge of the great river. the
gloomy canyons. mountains piled on
mountains, no stopping place for the
mind, no pause for the eye; rocks
piled in fantastic forms like great
castles, cut and fashioned and flung
into the air by the hand of the omnipo-
tent God, and towering over all the
giant peaks of Hood and Adams throw
ing then vast snowiields and glaciers
into the upper azure where snow-cap
and sky run together and the evening
sun let's down his curtains of purple
and gold, all this is a picture. poem
that holds and thrills you and ought TO
stir the brush of the painter and the
pen of genius. and some day will. So
let us encourage all budding poets and
artists. be they Ole 0. Margarine or
any other. Already
Some mute. inglorious Milton here
| may mediate
Whose genius and latent powers slum-
ber in his pate,
Some day TO the world he may his
talents give,
And crowned with glory to Immortality
live.
These lines are not put in quotations
for they are here for the first tim G
given to the printer ard are intended
as a brickbat of personal grievance
aimed straight at the mark, so duck
low or take to the woods.
The other day at meeting OF
preachers and churches at kalama,
Wash, there was actually put on the
program, the subject. ''Is War Neces-
sary for Revitalizing Christianity"
The wording itself is jutxapositior
of contradictory terms, collision OF
statement, CHASTITY sarcasm blinking
uut from beneath the grinning skull
of irony. The bare statement would
seem not only discord in words but a
bar sinister OH the escutcheon of the
universe. An affirmative answer would
make all bell easy of belief
| When the Emperor Constantine an
nexed the Church to the state and
the war machine he devitalized that
institution and it has been devitalzed
ever since. The church became merely
an asset of politicians and selfish inter-
ests, the cross was made the banner of
the Holy Roman Empire, which Vol
taire sarcastically declared was neither
holv, nor. Roman, nor an empire. A
blow was inflicted on Christianity from
which it has never recovered. 1t
opened the way for the unspeakable
Turk who came into the fair city of
Constantine and has been there the
scourge of God these four hundred and
fifty years. but before many moons
we hope to to see him pass out of
Europe forever. When the cable an
nounces Constantinople has fallen,
Thistledown may tell the Glacier how
he Jared there once years ago.
1t is one of the strange things of
human history that the Turkish despot-
ism, the most corrupt and cruel that
has ever been inflicted on humanity
should long have been permitted to rob
and plunder all'those lands of ancient
birth and glorious privileged those
lands of the Bible and classic literature
sacred in the minds of millions of
men.
If war can revitalize Christianity
then there ought to be great revival
of peace on earth. good will to men all
around Constantinople, in the Balkan
peninsula and in the slaughter pits of
the far flung battle line.
If burned and blackened cities with
outraged and weeping and starving
and murdered women and children; if
the hills heaped with human bones, the
fields fertilized with human flesh, the
waters of the earth made TO run red
with blood if as Roosevelt says, no
triumph of peace is quite as great as
the supreme triumph of war; il to
destroy, tear down and butcher human
beings, to shoot to pieces and burn up
the accumulation of centuries of ma
terial, intellectual. artistic. domestic
and moral treasures is heroic and glori.
Gus and will usher in the reign of
pacee and love. the triumph of that
l. IA
infinite perfection shall justify the
long tragedy of history and fulfill the
promises of God, then unioose the dogs
of war. the poison gases and shake out
the red thunderbolts of battle. On
with the fight. Let not our sons be
mollycoddles and sissies.
"On the world 5 broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle,
Be hero in the strife
ThictIaInm,