New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1917-08-19
Audiences Rock
With Approval

war week at tCnaulauqud bah0 "N9
a veritable "war dance" the prepare
tory tribal whettings. Never was the
extraordinary gregariousness OF the
human species better advertised tnan
in that S1,5O0,OOO grove where 10000
people rose to the war idea ike a
Western front. Large audiences in
the assembly hall rocked with approya
at the touch of the orators, DR., j. W.
Siaughter and Professors r. II. Fyfe
and Earl Barnes. The bands played,
the women knitted and the Red Cross
Committee made carnival IN the
square.
But there was insurgency, too, at
Chautauqua Lake. DR.. Slaughter, while
accepting the American participation
in the war, declared boldly for a re-
statement of American war aims, laud-
ed the Kerensky principles and called
for open faced diplomacy and partlc-
ipation of the American voters in the
treaty of peace. The feminine audi
ence cheered him vigorously. And
Miss Helen Varick, of Boston. proved
the Middle West to have feeling, too,
for industrialism as well as for mill
fancy. For when she passionately de-
clared Americans to be ruthless of hu-
man life in industry and demanded
that the nation care for the worker as
well as for the fighter the purely war
orator had cause TO be jealous of the
applause she got.
Northern Ohio and Michigan did not
lend themselves as plainly to the war
formulas of the Chautauqua orators.
At Perrysburg, Ohio, rich in the lore
of Commodore Perry's exploits against
the British. there was an apathy that
could be felt with the hands.
Remote from Berlin and secure from
the ravages of the submarine, Perrys-
burg, Ohio, lounged in the evening con-
tent of a full harvest day. "This isn't
our war, anyway" said the man on the
village street corner. Jaw, Uncle
Sam can lick that bunch easy"
drawled the idler in the barber shop.
Perrysburg is not hurrying to the
ramparts.
The explanations of the Coit-Alber
managers of this extensive Ohio and
Michigan circuit reveal the detachment
of this district T. V. Hendricks said:
1--WE have given the programme n
patriotic tone, according to the sug-
gestions from the War Department.
But il is not our business to tell the
people what they want. We give them
what they want. and sometimes what
they want is not what the Administra-
ton at Washington wishes them to
have"
In the Perrysburg tent Colonel W.
II. Miller, of Spokane. Wash. was able
TO enthuse the audience to a patriotic
pitch rather with appeals for COM
munity spirit, for better roads, for
better schools and for the larger
things of our internal national life.
The war in the Eastern Hemisphere
left them cold. New England and Old
England are remote influences.
At Rochester, Mich, there was un-
covered a finer spirit, though this was
the state that made pacifsm famous,
Ground shifts slowly from peace TO
war, though the example of Henry
Ford in rushing to the common de-
fence has proved eficacious. Hon.
Francis Nelson, former member OF the
British House Of Commons, was the
anti-mihtarist orator of the Chautau-
qua circuit in Michigan. Though care
full to accept the American entry into
the war, he did not fail of his applause
when re scored secret diplomacy ms
the mother Of the war" and pictured
an international ideal.