The Blackfoot optimist., 1915-07-15


of writing to your many readers con-
cerning the terrible strife and tornado
of human passion that is today sweep
ing over the nations of Europe. The
storm that is each day sacrificing thou
sands of true, brave lives, and causing
untold misery, want, and desolation, to
make its biding place among these
stricken powers.
Looking backward through the great,
wide ocean of time we see the rise and
fall of nations, just as the isles of the
sea come into our view for time, and
then sink again to be almost hidden
forever in their watery bed.
| Thus it has been through all time,
the monstrous as well as the minute
events of life have their beginning and
end, everything large or small has its
rise and fall. Every nation must either
accept the true Christian spirit or they
too will continue to fall regardless of
that great old ancient power of Rome,
the one who prided herself in her su-
perior strength, beauty, and law. The
nation who forgot "God'' and looked
only to some idol that did not condemn
her for her vice, luxury, greed and
pleasure reigned supreme for a time,
but the reckoning day came at last, and
after bloody war she lay helpless,
never to rise again, never to be re-
built until God was made the corner
stone.
Reformation and improvement move
steadily on, but Christianity must be at
tanned before the mission of man shall
be accomplished, and the cruelty of
wars relegated to the dark past.
France years later endured the sys-
tenn of judaism and in it's most in
tolerable forms. This system was, how
ever, common to the whole of Europe
"Briefly stated feudalism regarded
all the land Of a county as the property
of its King who divided it among their
several dependents. The lot of those
who were in absolute slavery excluded
them from the influences of feudality,
as social and legal institution. 1t was
really savage age. An age in which
the pressure of taxation and oppression
of mobiles kept the farmers hopelessly
poor, and the farm untitled. 1t was an
age when the tax-gatherers was every
where and when the peasant who killed
a wild boar which trampled his crops
could be thrown into prison; when corn
could only be ground in the lords mill,
and bread baked only in his oven. Such
was France in the latter part of the
18th century, This is indeed a very
dark picture, but it is only one of many
and merely a step to the revolution that
followed.
Was Christianity, and brotherly
spirit the cornerstone here. Or was it
greed for many and power among the
king and mobiles.
Why should not the titled nobility
have had more affection for their sub
jectss Did they have the Christian
spirit in their lives9
Alas, the theatre of European wars
is strip Of country four hundred miles
long, and two hundred miles wide;
bounded on the northern end by the
Baltic sea, on the southern end by the
Carpathian Mountains and on the east
ern, and western ends by nothing at all.
Today they journey along thousands
of miles of fort-Gned frontier in Europe
with millions of men, trained by SOL
diers of the highest skill, and every
setting sun looks upon thousands of
new souls that have given their lives
for their country, and everyday as the
self same sun rises in the east it looks