New-York tribune., 1918-04-09
Downfall of Odin
From, The Springfield Republican
NF SUGGESTIVE interest in the midst
of the prosecution of the German

AF SUGGEollVE l. interest IN the midst
I of the prosecution of the German
purpose to rule the world are pass
ages in a speech by Lord Macaulay, deiv-
cred at Edinburgh in 1852, on his return to
Parliament after absence of five years
That period had covered the French Revolu-
tion of 1848 and all that it involved Of
European ovcrturn, and to those turbulent
happenings he did not fail to refer Here is
q striking passage in Macaulay's references
For myself l stood again; and though
naturally of a sangulne disposition, | did
not for one moment doubt whether the
progress of society was not about to be
arrested-nay, whether we were not
doomed to pass in one generation from
the civilization of the nineteenth century
to the barbarism of the fifth. | rcmem-
bered that Adam Smith and Gibbon had
told US that the Dark Ages were gone,
nevermore to return; that modern Europe
was in no danger Of the fate which had
befallen the Roman Empire. The Flood,
they said, would return no more to cover
the earth, and they seemed to reason
Justly, for they compared the immense
strength of the enlightened part of the
world with the weakness of the part which
remained savage, and they asked whence
would come the Huns and Vandals who
should again destroy civilization? 1t had
not occurred to them that civilization
itself might engendcr the barbarans who
should destroy it, 1t had not occurred to
them that in the very heart of great capi-
tails, IN the nelghborhood of splendid pal
aces and churches and theatres and
libraries and museums, vice and ignorance
might produce race of Huns ficrcer than
those who marched under Attila and of
Vandals more bent on destruction than
those who followed Genseric
Such possibility was not detected by
Adam Smith and Gibbon, or other historians
and statesmen, but how far easier the pro-
lection of what came in that time than the
realization in our day that the Kultur of
Germany would produce what we have seem
and are seeing. Macaulay rooted the peril
OF his time in vice and ignorance; we have
found 1T in perverted education and arro-
gancc that is not of Christ. The disorders
whercat Macaulay stood aghast are less re-
voting and more in the natural order of
things than the brutal exccsscs and ordered
cruelty that accompany and mark with saw
agcry and slaughter unsurpassed the schema
~ >N'4NNSos III NNlCn emperor William
glorles and for which he seeks partnership
with his God.
'" hence were to come the Huns and the
Vandals who should again DESTROY civi)iza.
ton % They have come to us out of Ger
many and threaten to reach to the United
States What a staggering chapter of his
tory IS being made before our eyes! Again
the chalenging question has come, Is civil
izatlon to be saved? ga war between Odin
and Christ" Elhu Root says this is, and
as by thclr works we shall know them" 50
1T IS 1T is a struggle for the overthrow Of
the maintenance Of all the progress that the
civ1ilzation of a century has made toward
christianity" In the light of what has
happened in this war, there is possible to
t,e+ INC 1ar r. minded 1a! no other conclusion than
turblng than that which Macaulav va
viewed, the United States has taken it's place
with Christ for the downfall of OAin