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Show H A HELL OF A CHRISTMAS H By William Marion Reedy. H WpilRY CHRISTMAS !' I said to ray friend j 1V1 Who had just been telling mo what a rot- H ten year ho had had in his business. H "This is a Hell of a Christmas; that's all I've H got to say," ho replied, and boarded a street car. H Then I got to think about it and I agreed. It H is a Hell of a Christmas. There are ten million Hj men, more or less, in Europe, intent upon killing H one another. There must have been a million H killed, wounded and missing, by this time. There H is one whole nation, Belgium, in exile or on the B verge of starvation at home; their cities de- H stroyed, their industries ruined, their farms M devestated. And al this done by a power that M was a guarantor of that people's neutrality. Seven H greater nations aro one collective impulse of H hatred and vengeance. They aro bent upon de- M stroying the civilization that they have built up H for centuries. Shrines of art and learning and m Piety have been ruthlessly destroyed, and will be B destroyed. War has reddened the waters of al- M most all the seven seas. Upon the backs of the M people of conturies to como is being heaped up a H burden of debt incalulable, in facilitation of the H work of murder and rapine. Upon one side and M llio other are lined up the powers of Pagandom. H The priests and preachers and shieks and shin- H to clergy aro praying to God for victory. In the Hj countries at war business and commerce are crip- H pled or dead. The arts and sciences languish. H The schools are empty. The youth are called H from factory and furrow and forum to the colors. H Marriages are forced in order to bring forth chil- H dren against the time that they too shall be need- H ed to be fed to the cannon. Wives, foodless, are Hj driven ''on the town" to earn a living that is "the H greater death." Children are crying for fathers H in nameless graves by the Scheldt, the Meuse, Hj the Vistula, mothers for sons, wives for hus- Jj bands, sweethearts for lovers. And the people fl on one side and the other of the world-shaking H conflict are believing stories of their enemies H that would stamp them as fiends incarnate. The H summary of the situation reads like an extract H from a description of the life of the dark ages. H And the war works evil on nations in no wise H directly involved. Italy is under arms, Holland's H troops are mobilized and Denmark's and Nor- H way's and Sweden's all at an enormous expense. H Canada and Australia and India are called on H for men, for supplies, all of which cost money in H stggering sums. Poor little, Portugal and .Spain H are dragged into the devil's dance of debt and H maybe of death. M There is not a person on the planet who is H not hurt by this war. Iceland suffers by the H mines in the far North sea. Brazil Is glutted M with her coffee because of it; China with her tea. H Hawaii loses her Japanese labor because the H men of Nippon go home to fight, and her sugar Hj sales fall oif. M And the United States! The cry of the work-H work-H less worker rings in our ears. Commerce is H driven off the sea; there are two few ships. The H South is paralyzed under its load of unsalable M cotton. Manufacturing plants are idle because H they cannot get German tools or German dye H stuffs. Great Britain has made the North Sea H a mare clausum and asserts her right of search, H so that shipping even to neutral countries on the H North sea is too great a risk. The governor of j the canal zone calls for ships and troops to pro-H pro-H tect the Panama canal. The railroads cannot bor-H bor-H row money abroad for improvements or for res' re-s' funding their indebtedness. We are sending lit-H lit-H tie product out of the country and getting little in. Soup houses spring up in our cities. Rob-H Rob-H beries increase Winter's howling winds are H drowned by the cry of tho distressed. Factories aro shutting down. People who were wealthy up to the last week in July aro feeling the pinch of lack of money and perforce cannot pay their tradesmen. Tenants cannot pay their rents, or landlords their taxes. Banks aro carrying their clients but the clients are doing no business. The people are paying a war tax for a war in which they have not even "the rapture of the fight," and an emergency currency does not reach down to tho people. Worse than all, probably, there is a tendency to carry into life hero the antagonisms and hatreds hat-reds of the nations at war. There are signs of a division of people into pro-Germans and anti-Germans, anti-Germans, on the issue of tho responsibility for the war. This issue Is cropping out in our politics, poli-tics, in places. The war has involved us In ways we could not have imagined possible 'before 'be-fore last August. Murder, woe, want, despair, suffering incalculable incal-culable in forms innumerable envelope the earth and civilization is called upon to feed and clothe unhappy Belgium while all peoples have to take care of the miseries of their own. It is worse now than it was in the time when, as Macaulay wrote, quoting from memory, "and Red Men scalped each other by the Great Lakes in North America, and black men "butchered one another on the coast of Coromandel that Frederick might rob a neighbor he had promised to defend." Surely, my friend was right, bearing all this in mind, that this is a hell of a Christmas. And yet, I don't know about that. &t Here is tho world at war, of sourse, but . out of the war what good may I had almost said must come. The war has stirred the people peo-ple from a long sloth. They are thinking of other things that the idols of tho market place. We cannot refuse our admiration, our sympathy to those Germans who go singing to the ranks to give their country "a place in the sun." They fight, as they believe, for a nobler civilization, no matter what we may think of the ultimate of the doctrine of Trietschke and Bernhardi. They are making sacrifices, many of them the supreme sacrifice. sac-rifice. They are glad to give up all, even unto life itself. So with the Frenchmen determined to protect their homes and to take back the lost provinces and to avenge the shrine of Joan of Arc, though she has never been desecrated as by a Frenchman, Voltaire, in "La Pucelle." And the j Austrians and the Servians fight for their national na-tional ideals the one for the preservation Of the monarchy and the Austro-Hungarian hegemony, the other for an independent Slavdom. Russians go out to die for their fellow Slavs, to achieve things that shall obliterate the memories of disgrace dis-grace at Mukden, Port Arthur, Tsu-Shima. And Belgium! Sho has bled white to save France J' and England. She broke the march of the kai-rc kai-rc ser's matchless army. She showed herself a nation of heroes and her king, her kingly king is still in the field of the fight. And England. She iB awakened from sodden sleep. Her people were breaking up into factions threatening social revolution. They have been brought together in a common cause. They are incurring a burden of debt grievous to be borne, but that debt means that the aristocracy will be ousted from control of the land. The land will bo taxed because all things else are taxed to the margin of extinction. The aristocracy must relax re-lax its hold on the land. The land must go back jk to the people. England will move toward a per- ' fection of democracy. War helps Ireland to home rule. It evokes a loyalty from India that must . be repaid, in the enlargement of liberty and the extension of self-government to the Indians. The war will, in all probability, restore liberties lib-erties to the Poles. In Russia and in Germany, too, it has already resulted in a recognition of ithe nationalism of the Jews. The fight over Belgium's Bel-gium's neutrality means safety in future for tiie j little peoples. Let us look farther. The war shows that there cannot be a localization of war, that there can be no war that does not work injury to non-com-batantB to an unimaginable degree. The war shows that every nation has a direct, intimate, acute interest in any war and an interest antag- onistlc to war. The war will show the people Inow engaged in it, when they quit "seeing red," that the war would have been avoidable but for the machinations, of secret diplomacy, practiced in the interests of castes and rules. The war demonstrates that the doctrine of Free Trade is a conservator of peace. Everybody sees that war is only Protection incandescent. The simplest sim-plest minded known that custom houses at boundaries boun-daries are the causes of forts along the same lines. The obstruction of trade by tariffs makes j fight for trade, and a free trade country, without going to protection, tries to achieve the same re-j re-j suits by the policy of isolation of a rival by trea- ' . ties or ententes. All the peoples are feeling who pays the cost of war, in blood, in taxes. All the J peoples suffer that a few may get glory, may bo 1 given earldoms and lordships and vast estates j belonging to all the people. All of them must come to see that their enemies, like themselves, have 'been deceived by the ruling castes In the respective countries, that they have been led to believe their bread was threatened, that they have been lured on to fight and suffer for bene- Jtt fits tnat w 1jo monPlized by those who have W- set themselves in authority over them. Wait until the peoples count up their toll of dead and maimed and then count up the cost in taxes they must pay long after the dead are forgotten. Wait until, after the war is over, they come to recognize recog-nize their industries and listen for the feet of the young men who come not. Wait until a king, a kaiser, an emperor, late at odds, meet in a i palace, kiss one another, sup their wine, smoke their cigars and one says "I checkmated you at i Mons," while another replies:" "Yes, but when J ' I neared Dunkirk you fled from Buckingham 'i palace," and still another says, "My cossacks en- joyed your palace in East Prussia," and then all say together, "Well, anyhow, it was a grand game, and our fight with one another took the people's mind off an uprising against us." For that is what king and kaiser and czar will Ibe doing one of these days. And then all people will see and, seeing, will act. The war is a tremendous tre-mendous phlebotomy of the sword that will lift the cloud from the peoples' minds and eyes. Hodge and Jacques Bonhomme and Foolish Hans and mystic Ivan will know the remedy. They will bo hustled into no more wars. They will strike or late or soon against their rulers.. They will not go to war unless they have a vote on war. Anu they will discover that they are in more danger from the grasping controllers of opportunity at home than they ever were, over will or ever can be. from their fellow workers of an alien blood and tongue. The war is destined to be a grand demonstration dem-onstration of the meaning, the wisdom of democracy. de-mocracy. It cannot bo anything else. The European war shows us the full meaning of militarism in the extreme. It shows us the wis-dom wis-dom of our shirt-sleeves and plain speech diplomacy. diplo-macy. It shows us that we must have our own ships to carry our own commerce. It proves the wisdom of Washington's advice against entangling alliances with foreign powers. It proves to U3 that when we wall off Europe with a tariff we hurt ourselves as much as we hurt Europe. It tells us how foolish we were when we said, "What do we care for abroad?" The war is a lesson to us against Imperialism. We can see how Germany's Ger-many's colonies, all now lost, were a weakness not a strength. How about England's colonies? They are not colonies. They are nations. And they are free nations. As for India, in spite of whispers of sedition there, the war brought home to her the conviction that the empire is peace. The great war shows how the world is knit together, how no people can suffer much without other people suffering, too. The thoughtful of all lands cannot fail to see that the stupendous conflict con-flict must demonstrate to all minds the common interest of all nations in peace. This war, Germany's Ger-many's Crown Prince says, is a stupid, foolish, unnecessary un-necessary war. Every thoughtful man of every warring and every neutral nation knows that to bo absolutely true. Every thoughtful man knows that Germany cannot be crushed by the Allies as Germany has crushed Belgium. Every one knows that the war at its end will settle nothing that war cannot and will not unsettle, if armaments be not reduced. There is enough true democracy in Great Britain and France to save Germany from annihilation, if she lose. And if Germany should win, which now seems unlikely, she would only win until another coalition against her would destroy de-stroy her power as it did Napoleon's. So far as cdncerns the world-wide suffering, I would not be too optimistic or too pessimistic either. There's a middle course. Maybe, I think, the world needed this shock of universal pain. The world had been growing too smug. It was undoubtedly too much concerned with progress and property. So much so that It wouldn't look behind and beneath them to sed the suffering that was there, that i3 always there. We forget that suffering is always with us. We only heed it when it is brought dramatically to our attention. Our capacity for sympathy was growing atrophied. We could write a cheque and forget it. But now no one can write a cheque without thinking hard beforehand and the need for help is so great that cheques cannot reach it. Everybody must come in with help to make any impression. The vast need broadens our sympathy. Its (Continued on Page Twelve.) B A HELL OF A CHRISTMAS H (Continued from pngo 7.) H nearness as well as distance quickens our benevo- H lence. We find wo can't confine our sympathy or M benevolence to the suffering at our door. It wan- H ders off to the Belgians, the Germans, the French, H the Austrians, the Servians. It makes us more H cosmopolitan, more universal. We begin to un- M derstand something of the brotherhood of man. H And into every man s head pops the questions: m Why should the brotherhood of man be a brother- H hood only in suffering? Why should there not be M a brotherhod of prosperity, of happiness? m As soon as we put the question we see the an- M swer, or hear it in the still, small voice. Man's H sufferings are man's doing. "Man's inhumanity H to man makes countless thousands mourn." And H man's inhumanity is chiefly given effectiveness j through government and its control by the few a3 H against the many. TJie people err, but the people fl are deceived. The world is big enough, it yields H enough for all. But all do not got it. They are H chouseled out of it by the few. They are the H worst chouseled where there is least democracy. H For democracy is common sense and common M sense whittles down the superman to the ordinary B men's size. The superman In the world is the H man of privilege. And common sense destroys H privilege in the long run. The people of the coun- B tries at war must see that they are democrats In H disaster and in death. They must, under the H hammer of war, see that their .hope is democracy H in life. They must see that helping men is nobler H than hurting them. And they must feel the de- B mocracy of all peoples in their efforts to relieve HI suffering. M The relief movements in every country are a B world-wide protest against war and against those B who bring on war. In the wake of war the nat- B ural democracy of the world comes with healing B in its hands. As the people fight, they are drawing M closer together. The very magnitude of this M . war's horror tends to make future wars improD- H able, if not impossible. As the sword of Mars stabs, B the world awakens to the insanity of whole- B sale murder. And the common people, of whom Hi God has made so many more than there are of H any other kind of people, see that in war they do H not win in any land under the sun. They are the HI masters. They will rule. fl And they everywhere hear men praying to the M one God that he make their enemies their foot- M stool. As if all men were not his children. The H crime of such religion! And we think of Christ M and Christianity. If Christ was anything he was M a democrat. If Christianity be anything it is de- m mocracy. And Christianity says, "Thou shalt not fl kill." Is Christianity, is democracy, is peace a M dream of the impossible? The world will not be- M lievo it. War is pagan and atheistic. It is hatred M and destruction. "The religion of valor" is no re- M ligion. It Is only lust of blood and booty and m the women of the conquered. It spits upon the M words "Peace on earth and to men good will." fl To war the gospel is a "scrap of paper' to be H torn up for necessity of state and the repudia- H tion justified by a programme of "frightfulness." M If the world believes in Christ and it seems to H do so still all this mu t pass away and Christ- H ianity, democracy and peace come to be. To such B conclusion come the thoughts sot going by the H great war and its consequences to the innocent. HI An1 so as I am writing tills there floats up H to the office the tinkle of the Salvation Army H lassies' bells on the street corner, and I remember H the article In the last American Magazine, which H shows how an army may be used for nobler things M than killing men, pnd how army discipline to such HI beneficent ends may be spread among the men of HI a country along the lines of co-operative work H for betterment, even as we have organized the H Boy Scout movement, and how there may be a chivalry and valor that will not draw strength from drinking the hot blood of the foeinan, and how there Is no doubt that we may build the world into a dear city of God how the energies of war may be, must bo, will be, diverted to the service of peace and love. And thinking that in all the lands of earth, as the Christmas bells are chiming, millions of better men than I are thinking think-ing the same thing because of the European horror, hor-ror, I come to the conclusion: This is not a Hell of a Christmas after all. Reedy's Mirror. |
