The watchman and southron. [volume] (Sumter, S.C.) 1881-1930, 1917-11-03
A Stick in Civilizations Wheel.

called 1T, is one of the cOmmOnest
tricks in polemics. In attack, in de-
tense, in escape, your partisan cuttle-
fish can throw out it's black fluid,
darkening facts until the straight line
of reasoning is in a hopeless tangle.
A favorite form Of this sort of pole.
mic trickery is obscuring the issue by
declaring your opponent has mo pol
icy"
| Lincoln, the openest of reasoners.
he who at every point in an argument
took almost Quixotic pains to make
his meaning and policy clear, was
forced always to keep an eye open
Tor this particular cuttle-fish trick. 1t
was played on him constantly in the
civil War by the Northern pacifists.
they wanted his terlns,--He had
stated them repeatedly from the start
the Union that was his object and
that alone. Whatever he did or said.
he did and said because he believed
1t would help the Union. What he
did not say or do he did not say or do
because he did not believe the doing
and saying would help save the I'm
ion. g:
But the North was sprinkleI with
people who were not satisfied, with
that one clear aim. They wanted him
TO set down in writing what he meant
to do with the Confederates should
they be defeated, what kind of gov
ernment he proposed to establish in
the revolving States; whether or no
he would give the negro a vote: that
is, they were busy from morning un-
til night obscuring the end--the saw
ing of the Union. o
Every great contest breeds a
school Of this pestiferous cuttle-fish.
We have them mountaineering our
troubled waters with their "We-don't
know-why-we- are fighting" ink. They
want terms and threaten to hinder
the war in every way possible until
they get them
There are two ways of explaining
the people who today declare that
we. have been hurried" into this war
and that we don't know what we are
hghting for-one is that intellectual
blindness-that ability to think what
you want to think, to see no more
than you want to see-engendered by
fanatical devotion to a particular for
mula or scheme7often very good in
itself;-the other is plain intellectual
dishonesty.
II ever the reason for war was
clear, If. ever a people came to a war
by solid if slow argument, it is now.
If ever the aim Of a conflict was stat
ed fully and unanswerably it was so
stated by the president of the United
States in his message of April 2, de-
claring war. That message is ana
must remain our Justification and our
ann. We are in war because the
wheel Of civilization is blocked by q
stick of such prodigious and hideous
toughness that it never again will re-
volve in the path of free democratic
progress unless that part of the world
which has chosen that path frees the
wheel
Three years Of experience in which
every opportunity was given the I'm
perial government of Germany to
clear itself Of the, charges Of being at
war with freedom, with law and with
humanity itself, have proved beyond
a question that it is upon these deep
est aspirations of the world that i
does war.
Prussianism,N as we have come TO
call the doctrine on which Germany
bases it's attack on the world he
iieves in itself and it's superiority to
the rest Of us. It believes itself call
ed' to spread itself over the rest of us
IN spite of our liking il or not. II
pelleves in war as the divinely ap-
pointed instrument for our conver-
sion. Believing this, it made good
and ready for it's great crusade. 1t
developeds great healthy, busy,
trained, obedient people-people who,
Tor the sake of the security they en-
Joyed in the perfectly adjusted ma
chine, were willing to accept war
which was to make them richer.
more powerful, rulers of the earth.
Ihls war is but the first campaign
In the series which was to Prussian-
iZe the earth. Study Germany's own
teachings, follow the. patient, inteH
gent worming into every nook and
Granny of the earth and you cannot