The Farmington times. (Farmington, St. Francois County, Mo.) 1905-1926, 1919-01-31


exemplifcation of its mighty truth
we have but to look across the world
at the sad and solemn plight of Eu-
rope today.
The Old World is hungry and
abased. 1t weeps in sackcloth and
ashes; it bleeds from it's wounds. 1t
reeks with anarchy and murder, the
pillow has not been in its burrows, its
harvest has been the harvest of death.
Even the free democracies of Eng
land, France and Belgium have been
rent and sundered pitiably. The fiow-
err of their manhood is dead and gone
blown from the mouths of the guns
into eternity.
England has not been invaded, it is
true, but she sits broken-hearted
counting her dead-her holy and i'm
mortal dead who sleep by millions in
Flanders fields. She weeps to see her
woulded and her MANNED. Briton and
Scot and Celt, whose great hearts
bled and whose great souls went up to
God to salute him sitting in His gold
en- chair.
France and Belgium count also
their dead and weep to see their
wounded and their manned. More
than that, they look upon their black
ened fields and behold the wreck and
ruin of their fanes and the fallen
rafters of their once happy rooftrees.
All of them must reckon the fear
full cost they have to pay in money.
Burdens of debt are on their Shout
ders that only the generations of the
future will be able to nav,
And as to Russia, Austria and Ger
many, what of them? The reborn
barbarian brushes them in his wild
and savage hands; he rends them in
his hate; his bludgeon is upon them;
his torch has put them to the fame.
Only the mercy of God, through
America, can save them from utter an
initiation. We must feed them or
they shall die of hunger; we must
clothe them or they shall perish of
cold. We must lift them up with our
hands or they shall never rise again.
The plight in which the Old World
finds itself was inevitable. The sys-
tenn of countless centuries has borne
it's sure and bloody fruit. 1t sowed the
wind and it has reaped the whirlwind.
The curse that has come upon Eu-
rope is the curse Of Kings. The sys-
tenn which made it possible for des-
potic few to rule the many could not
possibly have had any other end than
this.
To get at the heart of this wild,
murderous thing call the Bolsheviki,
we must go deep into the past. 1t is
a thing that must certainly be crush
ed, and quickly, by the forces of law
and order, but, in the meantime, the
student Of history beholds the cause
which gave it birth.
The oldest man that lives today
will easily remember that in his boy
hood there were prophets who told of
a time when the stolid, ignorant mu-
jik of the steppes, the "brother to the
OK, would let fall the sickle from his
gnarled hands and light a torch;
when he would leave the furrow of the
field and go forth to STAY.
Prophets and those who were less
than prophets saw that awful spec
ter stalking always down the high
ways of the world.
We of America who have always
been free, are able to see the causes
of Europe's dilemma, with clearer
vision than they can see it themselves.
The curse of Kings has never been up
on us. Nothing has ever had birth
or life in America that could make
Bolshevik of a man and transform
him from human being into beast.
No matter how poor any man has
ever been in America, he was a free
man still. His liberty could not be
taken from him without due process
of law and by the consent of jury
of his peers. His personal fortunes
might fail him, but the strong arm Of
his country was ever about him as it
still is. Whether in rags or clothed
in purple and fine linen, his country
proclaimed him a man.
The result is that now America,
alone of all the nations of the earth,
is not menaced by Bolshevism. The
few wild aliens who have been freely
permitted sanctuary on our soil have
already discovered that the red flag
of anarchy cannot be flung upon the
winds of America.
We need no army to crush the Boil
shevik, if it shall anywhere here
raise its head. The civilian population
of each community stands ready and
able to crush it.
America is ruled by law and not by
individuals. Wherefore, the Ameri-
can in his little factory-town cottage,
the brush cutter in the mountains, the
s-ich man in his mansion-they are the
law.
How, then, can an anarchist, Boil
shevik or any other kind of red de-
stroyer be made out of men to crush
the law who are themselves the law?
Reasoning from this advantage, we
see how it was inevitable that the Old
World now reaps the whirlwind from
the wind it sowed.
From time immemorial Europe has
been ruled by Individuality kings
and close coteries that hedged the
kings in for their own profit. Their
system was to enslave the people, to
keep them ignorant, to shut them out
from all participation in the business
of government.
The most horrible example of this
awful mistake is Russia. Consequent
~, Russia is today the most terrible
sufferer of the fruition Of that system.
There can be no question that the