Belington progressive. [volume] (Belington, W. Va.) 1912-1927, 1918-03-07
SAYS WAR WILL
CONTINUE UNTIL WRITER'S
SELECT OTTER THEMES
Jerome X. Jerome Delares Armed
Conflict Never Can Be Ended So
Long as Fiction is Based on
Great Conquests


hopeful things about this war. The
one is that it is going to end. Soon
er or later the dove will return with
the olive leaf in her mouth God will
have caused will of reason to pass
over the earth, and the waters of
anger and hatred shall be assuaged.
Today the many-headed howl at those
who would hasten peace. Tomorrow
the curses will be for thnse who have
prolonged the war.
The other that there is going to be
no crushing victory on either side.
1t would almost seem as if a far see
ing Providence had arranged that the
forces should be so evenly balanced
as to preclude this possibility.
Any crushing victory" would
make militarism triumphant through
the world for tn enext century. It
would prove its value and re-estab-
lish its prestige as the most officacious
arbiter of human affairs.
A draw will expose its futility and
overwhelm it with the execrations of
the people. No nation containing the
the seeds of life ever has been crush
ed. Wounded and enraged, it creeps
away to feed upon its bitterness and
work out it's revenge.
After three hundred years the Bal
kan States turn and rend their perse-
cutter. Isreal, two thousand years
after the destruction of the Temple,
has grown into worldwide, power.
The Jena Of yesterday becomes the
Sedan of today, and the peace" of
1870 let's loose the deluge of 1914
II our rulers could be taken and
! forcibly instructed in history they
would stand aghast at their own folly.
That knockout blow, If it were to be
delivered, would send all Europe in
to training for still more frightful
war.
On the use that reason makes of
its opportunity during the years inn
mediately following the war and be-
fore the world has had time to for
get will depend the fate Of mankind
for the next half-dozen generations.
A league of all the nations to
enforce a universal peace is a fine
idea. One day it will be reached,
and our children will look back with
plying wonder to an age when
civilized man allowed himself, in all
! supreme matters, to be ruled by the
law of the jungle.
| But the ape and tiger will not be
driven forth without struggle.
The way will have to be abandoned
by the nations till the instructive
belief in war as God-ordained in
stitution shall have been rooted out
Of the individual man. War will
yield to the same force that, work
ing through it's silent, unseen pro-
cesses, has conquered it's twin sister,
Superstition, and only to that force
to the gradual rise of Reason.
If the thinking men and women
of all the nations work together for
peace, that League Of Nations will be
accomplished, but not otherwise.
They can form an international that
shall need no passports. Their APP
peals will beyond the reach of any
censor. In the enemy countries
there is great and growing party
of peace, convinced that all victories
of violence are but the defeats Of
humanity.
| do not think / am giving to my
own profession undue Importance by
expressing the conviction that, since
the advent Of the printing press, the
worlds lust Of warefare has been
chiefly fpstered by the writer's Of
fiction. II that is TO continue, we can
say good-by to any dream of last
ing peace.
! Unless, after this war, the writer's
of all countries, aided in a lesser
painters, submit themselves to a self
denying ordinance, the next genera
ton will most assuredly grow up
hungering and thristing for the taste
of war
/ was brought up as youngster
on Erckmann- Chatrian and Alexan-
der Dumas, with tales Of the border
feuds and the joyous days of the
Round Table, and can remember
how my schoolboy blood leaped with
delight when / heard that Prussia had
declared war on France, and how /
hoped that one day, not far removed
my own dear country would call me-
to battle. On Sunday | did lip-ser-
vice to peace, but in my heart OF
hearts | deemed in the prayer OF. a
coward.
Dear ladies, who have probably
/ ,ao,xor -aar opv+h;,e(r ,,eo,.n :,