The mirror., 1919-05-01
o WE realize the enor-
nous changes in all the
forms of life which this

HgSSkN nous changes in all the
9YNSNHH forms of life which this
lg8D earth war has brought
abouts Do we feel to what new
world we are entering? What
new epoch of civilization we have
to make? We shall see these
years of war, without exception,
in range and in honor, have caused
a new, let US trust loftier, civili-
zation to appear, in which mllitar-
ism and national hostility may be
transformed into an age of in
dustry and peace. Not that these
four years of fighting alone have
done this, but the great evolution
of enlarged humanity has been
moving on by stormy stages ever
since the first republic of France,
and the successive waves of revOlu-
tionary growth in Europe. On
ward it went, with the final over
throw of the Bourbon monarchy
in 1880. And all Of these led up
to the vast transformation that
this colossal war has made mani
fest.
Take in all it's aspects and all its
consequences, this new era of
which we see the dawn is greater
and more blessed than the epoch
when Europe began to settle after
barbarism, more pure than the ad-
vent of the new learning and the
new thought, more wise than the
spasmodic revolution in the times
of Danton or Napoleon. And, now
this great war has opened an era
in which the old order seems dis
solved in a great cataclysm. En-
pires in China, in Russia, in Aus
tria and Germany are dissolving
like storm clouds. Nearly half of
the human race has passed from
despotism to republicanism. The
terrific machinery of war that has,
for two generations, been organ
lied at Berlin has been pulverized,
never to darken this earth again.
New republics have emerged out
of the wreckage. Asia has been
freed from the cruel desolation
where the Turk had planted his
foot. Africa has been freed from
the murderous greed of the Hun.
Japan, and in due time China, is
entering into the civilized COM
munity of nations. People from
some twenty different nations have
Joined in arms to resist the menace
of domination by one. The com.
mon cause of civilization in peril
has reused the people from New
foundland and the Mississippi to
the Ganges; from the Cape of
Good Hope to Australia, and New
Zealand. and Japan. And above
all, after nearly a century and a
half, Americans and British citi-
zens of various races were fighting
side by side as brothers in arms
and almost as one people with a
common fatherland. Nothing so
deep seated as this has ever hap
pened in the civilized world.
This awful time of bloodshed,
ranging from the Arctic circle to
the farthest Pacific. has given a
new meaning to all the forces and
brought together former enemies.
Only twenty years ago America
and Britain and France we're at
arms length. Can the United
States, Britain and France ever be
parted again? Will not the races
of the central empires owe their
free life to us-now together the
vanguards of civilization?
Four years of superhuman strain
have transformed the face of the
world. East and West, North and
South have come together as
brothers in ways that they never
knew. Humanity has come into
its own in peace and union. In
ventions to use and control the
material earth, which were