The daily Gate City. [volume] (Keokuk, Iowa) 1855-1916, 1915-03-09
3 scythe, and has set them as machine
) tenders to do the bidding OF their

scythe, and has set them as haciiih.
tenders to do the bidding OF their
masters.
i It has brought strange men to the
door-sills of peaceful People; meh
like their own men, bearing no srudSes
one against another; men snatcneu
away from their fields and villages
where their fathers lie buried, TO k'ii
and burn and destroy till this otneI
people are driven from their homes OF
a thousand years or sit abject and
broken.
/ n has stripped farms and ruined
Iself-sustaining communities, ana pour
ed into a bewildered march for succor,
the crippled and aged and bedridden,
the little children and the women
great with child unborn.
1t has set vast areas at the task Of
rehabilitating economic gains won
through centuries of struggle and sac
rifice: and not until then will they be
II free to think not merely of living, but
| of better life.
II has RACED the flowing lines in
which the art and aspiration of earl
Ter generations expressed themselves,
and has thus waged war upon the
dead.
! It has tortured and twisted the
whole social fabric of the living.
II has burdened our children and
our children's children with stasser-
j ing load of debt.
! 1t has inundated the lowlands OF
the worlds economy with Penury aad
suffering UNREASONABLE, hopelessly de-
pressing standards Of living already
much too low.
1t has rent and trampled upon the
network of world cooperation IN
trade and craftsmanship which mac
made all men fellow-workers.
1t has whetted a lust among neu-
trail nations to profit by furnishing the
means to prolons, its struggles.
1t has blasted our new information
alism in the protection of WORKING
women and children.
It has distracted our minds with the
business of destruction and stayed tie
forward reach of the builders among
men.
It has conscripted physician and
surgeon, summoning them from re-
search and the prolongation of life 20
the patchwork of it's wreckage.
1t has sucked into its blood and
mire our most recent conqnests over
the elements--over electricity and air
and the depths of ocean, and has pros
tituted our prowess In engineering,
chemistry, and technology, to the serV'
ice Of terror and injury.
1t has bent our achievements IN
transportation into runaways. SO that
neither volcanoes nor earthquakes.
nor the rat-holes OF famine. but only
the plaques can match war in I'M
bounded disaster.
Its Wrongs.
1t has in its compulsory service
made patriotism shell, empty OF
liberty
It has set up the military independ-
ent of and superior to the civil power.
1t has substituted arbitrary author
ity and the morals of footloose men
who escape identity in the common
uniform, for the play of individual
conscience, and that social pressure
which in household and village, in
neighborhood and state, makes for
individual responsibility, for decency
and fair play.
It has battered on apathy. unintel'
Iligence and helplessness such as sur
render the Judgment and volitionl OF
nations into a few hands: and has
tnullifed rights and securities, such as
are of inestimable value to the people
and formidable to tyrants only.
/ II has threatened the results OF 8
hundred martyrdoms and revolutions
and put in jeopardy those free govern
ments which make possible still new
er social conquests.
It has crushed under iron heels the
Furnishings of civilization itself.
Its evils.
II has turned the towers of art ant
iscience into new Babels, SO that ou'
philosophers, and men Of letters, OIL
PHYSICISTS and geogrRphers, our econ
omtsts and biologists and dramat1sts
speak in strange tongues. and to hati
each other has become holy thins
among them.
II has made were-wolves OF neigh
Iborinp peoples, in the imaginations o
each other.
/ It has set faithful against faithful
lpriest against priest. prayers asalns
! PRAYERS for that success OF one arm,
which means slaughter of both.
/ It has put It's stamp upon growlne
boys and girls, and taught them q
hate other children who have chancet
TO he born on the other side OF some
iman-made boundary.
It has massed and exploded thu
causes of strife. fostering religion:
antaconisms and racial hates, 1noreed
ing with the ugliest strains OF com
lmercialism, perverting to It's purposes
the increase of over-dense reputation
and their natural yearning for new OF
irortunities for enterprise and l1Vell
hood
II has not only shattered mem
breasts, but loosened the black fury o
their hearts; so that in rare, am
cruelty. and rage, we have ancien
brutishness trailing at the heels OF al
: armies.
It has found world of friends ant
) neighbors, and substituted world
cutlanders and aliens and enemies.
II has burned itself into mems SOUL
&c on owl fact of life to be accepted