The Idaho Republican. [volume] (Blackfoot, Idaho) 1904-1932, 1920-10-27
A GREAT LESSON ON
THE WAR.

1'"Sioh hoo 'CCh iCpIOuuCcu again III
Blackfoot, and the hundreds of peo-
pie who saw it have seen the ma
terial that teaches great lesson on
the aftermath of the war.
There is enough of horrible things
that happen during every war, but
the horrors of war are followed
by other horrors. The Birth of a Ma
ton illustrates these matters.
The things that happened in our
country following the Civil war are
happening in various degrees in the
nations of the world affected by the
World war. There is a great lesson
in them that we can apply right now
If we will but do it.
The war is carried on without any
compromises. A war means that
everybody tries to have exactly his
own ideas put into effect without re-
gard for the other fellow. 1t hardens
people. 1t makes them go to excuses
and extremes; it makes men have
radical ideas and less of sympathy.
An extreme in anything brings about
the opposite extreme and the effect
of war is to magnify those extremes
The subsection of the black race of
the south cultivated the radicals that
swung the pendulum to the other ex-
IRENE and subjected the white race,
placing them at the mercy of the
black race who lacked sense and rea-
son.
The man acting in the play under
the name of Stoneman was illustrat-
ing character in the affairs Of the
nation whose real name was Thad-
deus Stevens. He was slightly de-
formed and was raised and spent
most of his life in the north. He was
man of very strong ideas, law
yer, statesman and an influential
man in the government Of the north
He was a member of congress from
1852 until near the time of his death
in 1868. He counselled Lincoln to
treat the southern states after the
war as conquered provinces, rather
than as members of the Union who
had made a mistake. On the death
of Lincoln he possessed a power in
deciding the reconstruction policies,
superior perhaps to any other man
and to his radical ideas, his lack
of understanding of the black race
and their relations to the southern
people, he brought about mistakes
of policies that will live on for gen.
erations. Out of his mistakes grew
the atrocities in the south and the
resultant activities of the night
riders.
Out of the activities of capital
and labor, each going to extremes
and wronging the other, there de-
veloped the bitterness and the agita-
tion that came along in such en-
phasized terms during the war and
eliminated after the war into excess
sive demands and strikes. The agi-
so active since the close
of the war correspond to the carpet
baggers that went south after the
civil war. They are a lot of unprin-
cipled men having only one set Of
ideas in mind and lacking the proper
scope of vision to make them reason
able. They plunged the southland into
q generation of suffering and sacri-
fee and engendered bitterness that
will last for generations. The same
kind of people have plunged the
world and our own good country into
sacrifices and bitterness of dura-
ton that will depend greatly on how
the sensible people managed those
things by their votes at the election.
The carpet-baggers of the south
sowed to the wind and soon reaped
the wirlwind. They told the black
man that he was the equal of any
body on earth and he acted accord
ingly and both the carpet-baggers
and the southern people were over
whelmed by his barbarity. The car
pet-bagger and the planter had to
unite to protect themselves against
the storm they had started.
History keeps repeating itself but
in the present instance the agitator
has been disturbing and attempting
to use the working man and the far.
mer. In this case it will be the work
ing man and the farmer WHO will
with the people the agita
tors are cOndemning, and they will
need to use their united influence to
save themselves from the agitator
and his work. In the south the black
quit work and went to living on
what he could get or take from
others. At the present time the agi-
tators do not produce anything and
hey are living on what they can get
and take from others.
At\the close of the war Lincoln
was working to put the southern
people to work to rebuild their coan-
.ry as soon as possible. The carpet
pagers changed all that and they
vent into period of idleness and
'trife. At the close Of the World war
! great effort was made to get every
,ody back to civil life and to work
md to start to reducing prices, but
he agitators and the profiteers pre-
'ailed and a period of idleness, Of
trife, of extravaganza and conten-