Fulton County tribune. (Wauseon, Ohio) 1883-1925, 1917-12-14
The Prince Of Peace

T1HE booming of heavy artillery, the hammer
II ing of machine guns, the rifle fire, the shrek
ing of shell and shrapnell, the explosions of
bombs, the slaughter of human beings; rapine,
murder destruction, devastation on land; hidden
death and destruction lying in wait in the sea and
death and destruction pouring down on defepseless
women and children out of the air. Hate and lust
rampant little children starving, destitute and mu-
tilated and slain in the presence of the mothers
that have bore them, Nations of people starving
to death, lands once productive that show the
marks of long years of toll and care, wantonly
laid waste; the snarl of the monster and brute
mingled with the means of it's victims rising to
the high heavens along with the turmoil and up
roar and deafening din of world at war! such is
the setting, the conditions in the midst of which
the peoples of the earth called to celebrate the
anniversary of the coming of the Prince of
Peace to be among men and to establish his
kingdom upon the earth.
Can the souls of men hear the melody and
catch the harmony of the angels song of peace
on cath good will among men, in the midst Of
the indescribabIe awfulness of discord which fills
the world?
Shall little children be able to hear the bells of
Christmas in all this deafening uproar? Can they
dream the happy dreams of childhood or enjoy the
happiness that belongs to little children at Christ
mas time, those children of Armenia and Belgium
and France. yes and England? Those who are
being robbed of every divinely appointed right
and privilege of innocent helpless childhood!
Those whose right is the balm of love and to whom
il given the tempest of hate.
If ever in the whole record of the human race
there was time when those lines of James
Russell Lowell.
Right forever on the scaffold;
Wrong forever on the throne;''
were literally true that time is now
What is the answer? is the Prince of Peace
indeed defeated? Have the prophesies of the
ages utterly failed? Is God no longer ''in his
heaven and is all wrong with the world? Have
love and peace and justice and mercy right and
truth, virtue and faithfulness been forever re-
placed by frightfulness and lust, falsehood and
wrong, bitterness and injustice, war and hate? Is
there then no hope; no law but that of the
Jungle no humanity but that which is a little
lower than the brute?
Thank God for the faith in thehe of the poet
which inspired him to follow the lines already
quoted with these;
But that scaffold sways the future
And behind the dim unknown
Standeth God within the shadow
Keeping watch above his own.''
Thank God for the faith in the hearts of the
thousands of men who have rallied under the flags
of the lands that have nurtured them to swell the
hosts that are today following one banner; unseen
it may be to the physical vision, but nevertheless
waving above all those who are facing the foes of
the right and liberties of all humanity in these
days. That banner of the Prince of Peace which
bears the emblem of His own supreme sacrifice
the cross of The Christ
Thank God for the faith in the hearts of the
millions of men and women and children that are
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