Bisbee daily review., 1918-11-23
THE THREE PATHS
(New York Tribune.)


 toward her.
 The first would be revenge
 The second would treat her with senti- mental tenderness.
 The third would seek justice
 The two extremes we conceive to be equally dangerous, equally irrational, equ- ally destructive of the finer stuff of our hearts and minds. The means of justice, difficult as il. Is to cleave to, holds the one hope of peace and right and progress.
 Alike in the spirit of revenge and in the mushiness of sentimental tenderness, easy feeling blots out reason and all finer emo tions Brute, binding anger and hate are the springs of desire for revenge If we give way to these primitive emotions, we should demand an eye for an eye, we should murder and rape in Germany as German soldiers murdered and raped in France and Belgium. We should dismem- so yielding we should end war begun in the defense of law and right and for the protection of the weak in a chaos of brutal ity. We should indeed sink ourselves to the level of our enemies.
 The other extreme Is based on a mass of soft emotions that are fine or foolish, ac- cording as they are or not devoted to right and controlled by intelligence. The parallel Is complete Anger and hate are fine and true and enobling when they are righteous and unselfish. They are part, and an i'm portant part of every stalwart right-doer. It IS only when they reach the point of blind rage and extinguish reason and the sense of right and wrong that they become evil. So with pity and kindness and ten derness and mercy. They are part and par eel of our finest civilization. But when they envelop and dissolve all other emo tions and all thought and reduce human being to quivering, shuddering, non-re- sistant they become a positive menace.
 You can observe these two extremes in the bringing up of children, in the punish ment of criminals. The angry, cruel par ent harms irretrievably both himself and his victim. The too lenient, sentimentaliz- ing parent, who Is too tender hearted to re- buke or control or punish does surely not less harm. We have abandoned our old prison methods because they were destruc- tive and brutal. But there is another ex- treme, equally dangerous, in which the sentimental and kind-hearted person shuts his eyes to the facts and would treat the criminal as sort of martyred hero, to the destruction of all reform and to the very great peril of the community.
 ustice, the golden mean, IS no easy road to travel. It means a vastly complicated I IL ,l.1rv 1Ff fba facts, doing right by all concerned, com munity as well as criminal It demands patience, resolution, wisdom. In the case of Germany 1t means first of all, insuring, so far as possible. the safety of the world against repetition of the German crimes, by either Germany or others. To let Ger many now go scot free and to welcome her at once back into the family of nations as an equal would be to commit the same sort of error which the weak, foolishly tender mother commits when she refuses to pun ish her child who does something positively dangerous to other children If we are wise and just we shall bring home the enor- mity of German crimes against civilization by the very homely and normal method that every parent uses of making Ger many repair as far as possible, the damage she has done. We shall then hold her a prisoner of civilization for period of pro- bation Such sentence must necessarily be indeterminate It may not operate equ- ally against all the central powers. Time alone can tell.
 There is no real quarrel between the punishment due the world for its protec-