The Hood River glacier. (Hood River, Or.) 1889-1933, 1915-09-23
Underwood Bouquets and BriCkbatS

Apart from all question of politics
that was a well deserved reprimand
administered to Major General Wood
by the Secretary of War for giving
Roosevelt an opportunity to make at
the Plattsburg camp, one of his bellig-
gerent TRADES and hostile criticism of
President Wilson, the Commander in
Chief of the Army, who ought to have,
in time of national crisis, the sup
port of all good citizens, and especially
of an ex-President. Taft, like beam
ing Santa Claus, with his sane speech
es, carries himself more worthy of
pattern as ex-President than Roose-
welt.
Teddy's vehement assertion that the
United States has played an ignoble
part during the last thirteen months of
world tragedy, and that peace treaties
are only scraps of paper not to be
taken seriously, that we must rely on
armies and brute force to vindicate our
national honor are the platitudes of
sabre rattlers and those who prefer
human gore and the roar of cannon to
the reign of right and reason. When
the smoke of the guns. the poisonous
gases, the shoutings and the tumult
of the captains have died away, in the
distance of history, it will no doubt
appear that the United States, during
this time of blood-ust, has gotten
more honor, prestige and influence than
if we had joined in the carnage and
blood letting.
No nation can dishonor another ma
tion. All honor's wounds are self-in
flicted. Nor can a nation vindcate its
honor by infiicting devastation, slaugh'
ter, rape and rapine on another nation.
Germany did not dishonor us when she
massacred women and children on the
high seas, but forever dishonored her
self, and those responsible for that
crime must take their places with
Herod and Nero and other monsters
who have disgraced the human race.
If we had tried to save our honor by
using the big stick on Germany, killing
her people and laying waste the cities
what would have been the result for
us? A hell of hate, billions of proper
ty destroyed, our best young men
killed, smoking blood. overflled ceme-
teries, women and children in tears,
a fearful indictment and most formid
able pleaders against this method of
vindicating national honor. Moreover,
we could have been dragged down from
our high place of peacemaker among
the nations to the level of the armed
bully ready for fight.
Roosevelt's sneer that if we do not
arm ourselves and fight we shall be
Chinafied, is a bad break. China has
followed the teachings of Confucius,
that is, industry and peace and not war
and militarism, and China has sur.
vived, the longest lived nation known
to history, while all the great military
empires of the past have long since |
gone moulderlng into the dust, and
China will be here ages after all the
strutting military nations of Europe |
have passed into oblivion. DR.. Arthur
II. Smith, our distinguished American |
scholar and forty years resident in |
China, says the future of the world |
belongs to the nglo.Saxons and the
Chinese. At any rate the future of
the world belongs to industry and |
peace and not to militarism and marti-
nets.
In the 10th century Spain was the
most powerful military nation in !
Euruope and owned the largest part of
North and South America. In 1888 she |
sent her great Armada loaded with the |
wealth of Mexico and Peru. to whip
little England with her 4, 1000, 900 people |
back into the superstitions of the Mid
die Ages. Today her mighty Armada
lies at the bottom of the English Chan |
mel, and stripped of every foot of her
oversee possessions she has become the |
Don Quixote among the nations, given |
over to ignorance, superstition and
bull fights. Her wealth and her mill
tary power did not save her.
Napoleon once dominated Europe by
the sword and uttered the blasphemy
that God is always on the side of the
strongest battaions. The desp0t swol
len in pride lOomed large on the world. |
Amid bursts of cheering his grand |
army crossed the Niemen. He won
the awful battle of Borodino, he took !
Smolensko, he dictated a dispatch from
the Kremlin at Moscow. Then the
snow began to fall, and annihilated by
the silent forces of nature. which are
the forces of God, his Grande Armee
was tossed out of Russia by the spear
points of the Cossacks, and the despot
of the world was flung out on the DESC
late. storm beat island of st. Helena,
TO die there amid those vast ocean soli-
tudes, spending his last days in petty
disputes with his English keeper about |
etiquette and champagne. Brute force
never survives. History is voice for
ever sounding across the centuries the |
laws of right and wrong. And there !
is no law of history more absolute than
this: That nations rise or fall, flourish !
or decay. according as they help or
hinder the eternal laws of God, of JUS |
tice and humanity. When they traverse
those laws they are doomed and not all !
the military power on earth can save
them. Thistledown.