The Washington times., 1920-02-05


when you read, near Justice Nc
Allally's advertisement, a news
item headed "Bites chunk out OF
wife's arm"
All this would seem hopeless to
q visitor from q better planet, but
only a few centuries ago there
was q regular rate Of fines for
murder, and in England, in the last
century, wife beating was legal,
II the husband used a stick mo
bigger round than his thumb"
The trouble with our delightful
civilization is this: We have at
/, the top the brutality Of success.
Governing isnorantly regardless OF
its future safety.
We have at the bottom the bru-
tality OF failure. protesting and
growing isnorantly. unconvincins-
ly, inconsistently..
To 80 per cent of so-called "vio-
lent radicals" and their followers
who wonder at their consistent i'm
potency, It should be enlightening
to read Heine's description OF the
English radical Cobbett.
Heine. himself a radical, detest-
ed autocracy, plutocracy, all injus-
ticA which he fought through life.
He detested, also. the brutality OF
the average radical, the jealousy
and hate that made his criticism
useless. Thus Heine describes the
radical:
"While 81 translate Cobbett's
words, the man himself comes bod
lily before my minds eye as saw
him at that uproarious dinner at
the Crown and Anchor tavern,
with his scolding red face and his
radical laugh, in which venomOus
hate miugles with 8 mocking exui-
tatiou 1t his enemies, surely ap-
preaching downfAiI. ''rN1 ="
"fIe is chained cur who fails
with equal fury upoh everyone
whom he does not know, often
bites the best friend Of the house
in his calves, barks incessantly,
and just because of this incessant-
ness of his barking cannot get
listened to, even when he barks at
a real thief.
Therefore the distinguished
thieves who plundcr England do
not think it necessary to throw the
growing Cobbett a bone to stop
his mouth. This makes the dog
furiously savage, and he shows
all his hungry teeth. Poor Did
Goblet, Engiand's dog. have no
love for thee, for every vulgar
nature my soul abhors; but thou
TOUGHEST me to the inmost soul OF
pity, as I see how thou strainest
in vain to break loose and to get
at those thieves, who make off
with their booty before thy very
eyes, and mock at thy fruitless
springs and thine impotent howl
ing" -
AS the violent radical looked to
Heine in England one hundred
years ago, SO he looks to you in
the United States today. His
howling is so constant that few
pay attention, and "the distin-
guished thieves" who plunder
America do not think it. necessary
to "throw him a bone to stop his
mouth"
The radicals howl and now, as a
hundred years ago, "the thieves
make off with their booty before
their very eyes, mock at their
fruitless springs and their i'm
potent bowling"
One kind of brutal ignorance at
the top serenely robbing, forgets
that once in SO often the radical
dog breaks his chain, gets loose
and tears everything to pieces,
without doing himself much good.
Another kind of brutality at
the bottom is even worse, because
it is even more ignorant with its
, complaining, based on envy
rather than on any constructive
! sense of justice.
You wonder that human beings
I should study their problems so
/ fruitlessly for thousands of years.
4. Then you read the advertise
ment, "$25 and up for beating
1 your wife," and realize that with
populations in the l. ss you are
dealing with barbarians, not de-
veloped human beings, and won
der they have done so well.
: Fortunately, there is no hurry,
4 no cause for final discourage
ment. What we call human be-
ings have lived on this earth fifty
or a hundred thousand years, at
most, have been able TO read,
write and record thought for less
probably than twenty thousand
wears.
Our earth, on the other hand,
as scientists can demonstrate,
has been In existence, travelling
around the sun, fully one hundred
million years, and it will last as
long again. Plenty Of time for
Improvement in the hundred mil
lion years ahead Of us. Before
the end Of the first million years
cu-uinS may have ceased to cx-
tplo.t ignorance. and ignorance as
. l.--l