The Daily Missoulian. [volume] (Missoula, Mont.) 1904-1961, 1917-05-13

MI. PRESIDENT and Friends: In our
lives, odr domestic affairs and history,
we divide time into quarter century
cycles. 25. SO, 70 and 100 Last year
we closed the 25th Of these celebrations
which you have given in honor of my
birthday. That quarter of a century
Is packed away. When opened by the
historian. it will prove to him mine
OF incalculable value i'm development
on the material and spiritual SIDE For
us it has imperishable memories of
good fellowship and good fellows. We
enter now upon the second cycle to-
ward the half century. It's first year
threatens with distinctions or changes
difficult to imagine the wonderful ad-
vance. reformations and developments
in civilization during the period of it's
predecessors.
Study Of History Fascinating.
There is no study so fascinating as
history, and none SO unreliable. A dis
tinguished economist has said that fig
ures will not lie unless n liar makes
the figures. History depends upon the
narrates them, but upon the grouping
which he gives to them and the lessons
which he draws. Macaulay said sub
stantially that all historians are liars;
he cited especially the ancients through
Thucydides, Livy. Tacitus, Xenophon.
Strabo and Sallust. They illustrate
their stories by speeches which they
vp,~a ca s,>< .
their statesmen and heroes. The only
one to whom Macaulay gives absolute
credence is Herodotus, the father OF
history. OF course we know nothing of
the period except what Herodotlls tells
us. but this great critic discovers inter-
nal evidence in the story so garr,llous-
~ told by the old Greek Of the truth
OF what he says and finds confirmation
of it in the poems of Homer.
Mistakes in ldealizing Washington.
We have made a mistake in idealiz-
ing Washington. The further we get
from him, the more biographers and
historians increase his stature, exag-
gerate his virtues and minimize his
faults. We are already approaching
Macaulay's statement that all hstor-
ians liars. No such man ever lived as
the traditional Washington. 1t is not
wise for the purposes Of instruction
and to present examples for youth to
follow. to make the hero impossible.
Years ago l used to read with wild de-
light the fascinating stories which
came from time to time before the
public of the principal characters of
history, including our own. The trou-
BILE with the author was that with all
their adventures his heroes bore
charmed lives, and with all their temp
tations they committed no sins: There
is a lesson in resisting sin, as well
as in repenting of it. Now and then
the average man and woman trembles
for fear the perfect statue of WASH
YER and explorer discovers that he had
some human weaknesses.
1t is difficult to understand the pa
cifists. One-half the losses of the
Civil war were due to the government
being unprepared to sustain it's life.
II Great Britain had been at all pre-
pared, this war would not have hap
pened. There have recently been pub
lished startling figures of the losses in
this Great conflict. They are put in
round numbers at ten millions Of men,
but the losses of the entente allies
have been much greater than those of
the central powers, that is Germany,
Austria. Turkey and Bulgaria. EN-
perts are united in the statement that
this discrepancy is due to the enormous
slaughter which came to England
France and Russia because of their un-
preparedness as against the perfection
of the German organization.
Democracy means equal privilege and
equal obligations. II we had a system