McNairy County independent. (Selmer, McNairy County, Tenn.) 1902-1969, 1917-04-27

do is great. A lone German stand
there offering the Stats. Zeitung ant
other papers in his language, and few
are the buyers. Every move in thu
| gigantic chess-board at Washington
is flashed to the presses and appears
in letters three inches high in th,
Telegram, Sun, Globe, World and othel
papers few minntes later and il
eagerly nabbed up by the passing
throngs. Everything is up to the
minute" and even ahead of the min
ute. sometimes. You feel that il
would be awful to be where you coulC
not get these papers and keep ur
with the greatest game of the ages
a world-crisis. But at the close o!
the day WEAKNESS creeps on you
and there is a sort Of feeling that the
happiest after all are they who lie in
their last low rest in mother earth
undisturbed even by the wreck Of
matter and the crash of worlds"
Maybe war was necessary to stil
up the human race. 1t was stagnat.
ing badly; Paris was cess-pool, and
in some way Berlin, Petrograd and
Rome were even worse. New York
and Washington and most other cities
Except Louisville, which is still a
sink-hole Of iniquity) had begun to
reform, but heaven knows there is
still room for improvement. Prince
Loris-Melikoff, of the Russian En-
bassy, told me the war was like a
spell of typhoid fever, which was to
cleanse the world of it's accumulated
bad blood, and like big sores which
act to get evil humors out of the sys-
TEN. Some others, more pessimistic,
seem to feel that this is the Armaged-
don of prophecy, the last dying strug-
gle of the human race, which has
gone mad preparatory to destruction,
and that it is about to be put out of
business to make way for something
better. We all know that the Holy
Rollers for years predicted a final
ending of the reign of man, and even
fixed it for the year 1914. l heard
such sermon myself, nine years ago
in Arkansas. Wouldn't that be a
good joke on some of US, if those
sainted calamity howlers really knew
what they were talking about! They
evidently had some sort of animal in
stinct that great catastrophe was
at hand; we must give them credit
for that. But a little reflection must
show that Gods hand is in this thing
to lead man back from the error of
his ways; to teach him the blessings
of peace and liberty, and it looks like
we are being made The chosen mes
sengers of that glad gospel to the
oppressed millions of Europe. No,
mankind is not yet ready to go out of
business; America is the evangel to
show the new and better way, and
ages Of usefulness and happiness are
still in store for the human race.
0, say; heard Billy Sunday the
other night, and let me tell you, he is
some talker." | will try to tell
something about him in a later letter.
In the meantime, let the old fields,
the fence corners, the briar patches,
and even the blackjack ridges and
creek bottoms of good old McNairy
be put in order to raise the biggest
and best crops in history. They are
talking of mobilizing an army Of mil
lions of farm workers to help Ameri-
ca feed herself and the rest of the
world. and of appropriating millions
of money to help the farmers do it.
There are lots of people now in Nc
Marry who still have the old-time gift
of raising on their own farms nearly
everything they need, including cloth
ing as we'll as food, and it's mighty
hard to starve out people like that.
once had occasion to write of
Mrs. Lorain Sebring of Lawton and
her fine son and daughter who help
her SO faithfully upon the farm where
they were all born and reared, and
how the widowed mother, Lorain,
raised sheep. sheared them. carded
the wool on hand-cards, spun it, knit
ted shawls and socks, and helped
elothe as we'll as feed herself and chill
dren, all on that Lawton farm. There
are many like her who could do the
same, and if the war keeps up, they
will have to get down to it, for hard
times will come, so many men being
tokan AWAY from tha farm and so