Tensas gazette. [volume] (St. Joseph, La.) 1886-current, 1917-02-09
BEWARE OF BElsHAllARs FEAST!

While this country has been charged,
and, we are afraid, justly so, with be-
ing 'drunk with unearned prosper
ity," it is certainly pre-eminently true
that some of the people who ought to
be sober appear to be hopelessiy
drunk and even sodden in their stu
pidity. This has been strikingly illus
trated in a number of foolishly ex-
pensive banquets and of wildly dissi-
pated affairs which have been given
recently in various parts of the coun-
try.
We do not know whether the story
is true that was recently sent out from
st. Louis, that at one social occasion
the guests were dressed as infants and
were fed whiskeys and wines through
nursing bottles. II it be true, the de-
gree of intelligence and decency mus
| indicated was far less than that OF the
youngest baby born to the poorest
negro i'm the south. For the sake OF
humanity we hope that the report is
not true.
But events almost as disreputable
and extravagant and banquets almost
as foolish are being given where the
cost has run from s25 to 500 plate.
The people who gave these banquets
have boosted of their cost instead OF
bowling their heads in shame that in
this day of Europe's awful misery,
with millions of people dying of star
lvation and of other millions in the
ltortures OF the lost through gaping
wounds on the battlefields, they gave
so little consideration to human suffer-
ling and sorrow and poverty as to be
guilty of such wilful, wasteful ex-
travagance. Indeed, it is worse than
extravagance: it is rottenness. 1t in
dictates a rottenness of heart which
endangers civilization, for it arOnses
the intensest justifiable bitterness of
the poor and the suffering in this
country who lack for foodstuffs and
Iclothes to keep body and soul togeth-
Ter. 1t is also an affront to Europe,
whose misery we should look upon
with sorrow and sympathy and whose
suffering We should seek to alleviate
by gifts in proportion to the blessings
we enjoy.
Many Americans, in their pity of
the suffering in Europe, and their de-
sire to alleviate as much of it as pos
sible, are giving themselves as nurses,
and in many cases men are volunteer
ing as soldiers, hoping thereby to
show their desire, even at the risk of
life, to serve humanity, and in serv-
ing humanity to serve God. Beside
such heroes as these extravaganza and
the wild waste of rottenness of these
great banquets and social occasions
must awaken the contempt even of
the Devil himself.
Europeans are in prison, and as a
people we have visited them not;
they are in want, and as a people we
have not ministered unto them.
We have gone our way rejoicing in
that prosperity which has blossomed
from the very graves of Europe's
soldiers, prosperity wdich has been
watered by the blood of millions OF
the flower of European civilization,
and yet we have lived within our
selves and for ourselves, and dared to
} say that we are not our brothers
keeper.
individuals and nations have done
similar things in the past and then
have had to pay fearful penalty
, therefor. Surely we shall not escape
a similar penalty unless we awaken to
our responsibility, and unless the de-
cent men and women of this country
ostracize, socially and in every Other
possible way, those who disgrace the
country and humanity itself in the
wilfulness of their riotous living, oil
which many evidences are constantly
coming to the publlc's attention, an(
daubtless there are hundreds of case,
Of which the public never hears
. Manufacturers Record.