The Eureka sentinel. [volume] (Eureka, Nev.) 1902-current, 1921-12-10
WHO is GOING TO DISARM?


| of battle settled the vfctors were 10
be seen dividing up. among their re-
spective investors, oil wells. iron
deposits, spheres of influence and lit
tie things like that. The United
| States went into the war with no sell
fish interest, but she came out Of 1t
with the financial mastery Of the
world in her left pants pockets.
WHAT BENEFITS BY VICTORY?
Yet how this financial mastery Of
the world has benefited the man who
works for wages OF a salary in this
country. 1t is hard to discover. He
either fought or paid for that mas
terry, but IL called upon to produce
his share Of the benefit he would have
a hard>time doing 1t.
So 1t always is. The common man
never shares in the material benefits
of war. except in the temporary and
accidental way. Those go to a few
inanciers. What the common man
gets is the fun Of fighting and paying
taxes and the emotional e~xaltation Of
engaging in a great patriotic enter
prise.
That these things are worth some
thing to him is evident from the
amount he pays for them. 1t is futile
to pretend that war has no appeal to
the common man. IL 1t didn't have.
there wouldn't be any war. The COM
mon mans life is apt to be a monot-
onous restricted affair. War may
suddenly make 1t exciting, intense.
War brings to a people an enormous
amount of misery, but 1t also brings
an enormous amount of excitement,
of the Joy Of primitive impulse un-
leashed, and of a great emotional de-
bauch. 1t can scarcely be disputed
that there is some human need which
war Satisfies Modern international
war is the spectacle of certain inter-
ested parties working to satisfy that
need and in so doing to promote GER
tain profitable purposes of their own.
The flaw In the system is that ever
since the middle ages wal has been
becoming less and less satisfactory to
the common man as a means Of salts
flying his craving for combat, adven-
ture, and emotional explosion. In
the middle ages war was a sort of
great f~ree-for-all fight in which men
encased in cast iron banged at each
other with long sticks. Nearly every
body had a good time, and not so
many were killed. A war could. and
did, go on for a hundred years with
out doing any great harm. And then
there were the Crusades. Who
wouldn't like to go ON junkets such
as those?
Then came the great age or discov-
cry and colonization. Here again war
became a delightful adventure. From
Cortez's subjugation of Mexico down
to Clusters last stand, the conquest
of the American wilderness was an
heroic adventure that rivalled the
!, Odyssey.
Those wars had appealed to the i'm
agination, they gave the common man
a real thrill. and they did not ex-
haust nations or people.
Modern war is an adventure for
comparatively few and a hard, mis-
cradle affair for many, and 1t does ex-
haust both nations and peoples. 1t
even sometimes destroys the men who
expected to benefit by it. Even men
of finance concede that the last war
cost too much. Some of them went
broke.
And the common man is disillus-
Toned. That is the great point. Com
pare the feeling of this country with
that which existed after the Spanish
American war, and you see where the
real hope of peace lies.