The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1919-03-21
(By Henry Watterson.)

(By Henry Watterson.)
He who would be we'll considered
must not prophesy evil. Yet how
shall we consider human conditions
inevitably embodying dangers ahead,
without in some sort mingling the de-
finite actualities of the present with
certain speculations touching the fu-
ture? When I write that the world
is on the way to its second destruc
ton, having enjoyed its first quite a
while ago, I invoke the wrath and
fly in the face of that unseeing' and
intolerant optimism which will brook
no lea or hindrance to it's dance of
death. 80 -.
eve are all going to the, devil
says Aminadab Sleek in the comedy
"And you, my lady," addressing the
Wicked Old. Woman Of the World
ego first" 1t is ever thus and thus.
We refuse to take our medicine. We
do not accept even our aphorisms and
apply them to ourselves. We gang
our gait hoping that while we pur-
sue the way another : will pay the
bill. Always, where we can we seek
+ to get something for nothing, and as
to, the result the word is "devil take
the hindmost." =
Reaction in: Speeches.
In that ribald sheet, 1.-The New York
Sun, I read the following:- -
'Tt is the fortunes good or ill;'@of a
prominent man that some Of his
words do not depart from the public
memory We remember Washington's
and Lincoln's phrases. We remem-
Der Cleveland and Roosevelt partly
for their .epigrams. The, contem-
iporary President has. been more pro,
life in speech, than perhaps any other
of the. American Chief EXECUTIVES.
He had earnest listeners, for. be
spoke when mems ears were keened
for his views on subjects Of the
greatest importance. His most inter-
esting speeches. have been made :. in
the last four years, naturally. There
has not been time for. the substance
Of them to fade from the peoples
memory. In several parts of Mr.. Will
sons last speech there were state
ments which could not have failed to
arouse in his hearers memories of
his past speeches; not necessarily
echoes, but reactions"
Then there and thereupon the Sun
proceeds to impale the President up
on the jagged ends of his parts of
speech on sundry and divers public
occasions.
Adopted English Idea.
The Sun speaks of "the Wilson
that was and the Wilson that is" 1t
undertakes to wheedle it's readers in
to the belief that the Chief Magis-
trate is the most inconstant of men
by contradictory quotations from his
own speeches.. AS, for example, it
recalls how, when he was preaching
neutrality, he dwelt upon the cir;
cumstance of our territorial isola-
tion-"America apart in its ideals"
and the wisdom of Washington's ad-
juration against "entangling alG-
ances"-places alongside of these de-
liberate utterances his latest farewell
address in which he declared that,
having heard nothing from the critics
of his league plan except the ques-
tion. "Will it not be dangerous for
US to help the world?" he, replied. "It
would be fatal to us not to help it,
and added "from being what I will
venture to call the most famous and
the most powerful nation in the
world we would of sudden have be-
come the most contemplate" "help-
ing the world" being the adoption of
the English, not his, plan to hitch
the United States to a League of Ma
tions, where, willy-nilly, we must do
in certain eventualities as we are
told to do by majority vote of our
European, Asiatic and African col
leagues.
II,