San Antonio light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1911-1993, 1923-04-08


! and squalor and pox marks and cross
| eyes and tuberculosis and graft and
4 greed and trusts" and solitary con
\ finement and mendicancy and unem-
! ployment?
Toward the absolute adjustment of
commercialized prostitution. hunger.
want. drunkenness and cruelty, in any
form?
And why? Why aren't we growing
nearer and nearer evil? If our God is
really a god of evil
All, but he isn't and everyone of
us feels it in his heart of hearts.
Wickedness Defeats Itself.
Say what you will, boast your lit
tie ignorant boasts about neopotism
and infidelity, yet you have only to
look about you TO know rather than
to believe that good is, and that the
infinite Power back of us all is Good.
Wickedness falls, presently. of its
own weight. We stop this form of
it, and that.
Children are no longer shipped
among convicts for savage shores.
over-lords no longer claim the village
girls for ''bride-right," the rack and
the thumbscrews are museum curios
now. and the insane are no longer
stoned through our streets.
Greed exists, but we denounce il.
Suffering exists. but we lament it.
We no longer sip our broth, battle
our dainty hands in human blood, and
take anguish and wrong for granted.
And we are beginning TO hear less
of that old and popular fallacy that
the very sayages were kinder than
we.
Those Happy" Savages.
"They were happier in their Zulu.
forests" said the Arrested Thinker
complacently. in 1890, in 1921. in
1920-and undoubtedly in 1910. "Why
not leave them to their savage sim
plicities? The minute Christian civ
ilization comes in, then they are
ruined! ~
If the Arrested Thinker would
only unchain that grey matter Of his
and let the wheels revOlve.
If he would read, let us say. some
of the actual descriptions of life. re-
ligiOus ceremonies, expiationS, punish
ments and tOrtures among savage
tribes, his heart would grow sick
within him.
Let him read, for example, of the
bamboo-shoot tortures inflicted upon
mothers whose only offense was to
bear twins; of the immolation upon
pyre of actual scores of a chiefs
friends and wives upon the chief
death-tOday. now. in spot no more
inaccessible than Calabar, on the west
coast Of Africa.
All the explorers, all the mission
aries, tell the same tale. But | know
no book more packed with evidences
of savage horrors than j. G.. Frasers
extraordinary "The Golden Bough."
Two Pictures.
Read a few pages of this, of bear
worship Of tabOos, of the seven and
eight-year confinement of little girls,
Of the tearing out of living human
hearts, of filth, stupor, stagnation
blindness and horror-some of it not
a hundred years old some of it going
on and being fought by our civiliza-
ton today
Read it--and then look out of your
window at two little girls in clean
Bingham. passing the free library and
the clinic on their way to school.
pleasantly conscious that a free and
happy mother has promised them a
picnic on Saturday. and perhaps
glancing up at a banner blowing
against blue sky, and humming con
fidently a verse from one of their
school songs:
"America. America-God mend thine
every flaw,
Confirm thy good with brotherhood,
Thy liberty with law"
Copyright, 1923, by the Republic
Syndicate).