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Show PACIFIST PALAVER. Mr. Bryan prints iu his weekly newspaper news-paper the speech of an Ohio pacifist, Hun. Isaac R. Sherwood, member of the house of representatives. An example of the reasoning pow-er of the peace.at-any-price advocate is to be seen in the following: "War is the greatest crime of the human race. It is not iu my philosophy that if the murder of one man makes a villain, the murder of thousands makes a hero.' "We. have referred to the Hon. Isaac R. Sherwood as a peace-at-any-price man, but we must in fairness to his motives if not. to his intelligence state that he expressly disclaims belonging to the peace at-any-price school of pacifists. paci-fists. But an Ohio statesman must be judged by his logic, or lack of logic rather than By his pretensions. If war is the greatest crime of the human race, always wholesale murder, then the Hon. Isaac Sherwood should be a peaee-at-any-priee man if he is not, for surely no one should be a wholesale murderer under any circumstances. The ultra pacifist loves to indulge in the antique idealities of the Ohio statesman without thinking whereto his arguments lead. He denounces all war as murder and then says he is not a peace-at-any-price man and would be willing to commit murder under certain cer-tain circumstances. For hark ye, the Hon. Isaac R. Sherwood proclaims that he will enlist when his country calls him to the defense of these sacred American shores from the more or less cowardly invader, "which," the Hon. Isaac adds with asperity, "is more than any of this powerful array of culpable cul-pable curmudgeons, who originated this horrid war scare will ever do." Thus we are reminded of the fact that in case of war we cannot look for help from the culpable curmudgeons. And for years we havo been expecting the curmudgeons to form at least a brigade j of zouaves. All war is not murder. It is not murder when a policeman shoots down an assassin in the streets, but that is war. Civil society is constantly at. war within itself and will be as long as there are criminals or bloody-minded mobs or well-intentioned fanatics who are lawbreakers. A police force fulfills ful-fills the functions of an army. The posse coniitatus which tried and failed to capture or kill Raphael Lopez, the Mexican baudit and murderer, was an army. The Hon. Isaac Sherwood, if he were assailed on the street of his town in Ohio by a highwayman bent on murder, mur-der, would be perfectly willing to have a policeman make war on and kill the bandit. And if there were five bandits ban-dits instead of one he w-ould be glad to have the policeman kill all five if it would save the skin of an Ohio congressman. con-gressman. He would not think that, it was wholesale murder; he would not cant, about police protection's being a crime. Now an army differs in no essential degree from a police force. It is supposed sup-posed to be used only in defense of the country or society in general from wrongful attacks. That armies are not aiwavs so used is conceded. Even a policeman po-liceman can commit murder. Bryan and the Honorable Sherwoods are harping nowadays on the supposed propaganda of armament men for military preparedness. There may be some truth in the charge, but even if it were true in the highest, degree it would not lie worth anything as an argument ar-gument against preparedness. And the probabilities are thnt it is about as true as a charge would lie that the manu-fai-turcrs of polieemcn 's clubs are conducting con-ducting propagandas to increase the size of poliee for, -vs. .-iVhen Bryan was sccietary of state he dire, 1,-d some letters to various Mexican Mex-ican authorities demanding the punishment pun-ishment oi those who had killed or wronged Amerieans. How did he expect, ex-pect, the authorities to accomplish this T No doubt he looked to armies or gendarmes gen-darmes to do the work. He expected the Mexican government then in power, de facto or de jure, to be prepared for this kind of warfare, and if the military mili-tary or the police had shot some of the offenders the secretary of state would not have talked of murder. But even illogical pacifists conaede that society must defend itself against domestic violence or foreign invasion, and yet they continue to oppose military mili-tary and naval preparedness. "There is no need," ithey say- "No enemy threatens us. From what source are we to expect attack? ' ' On July 4, 1914, Great Britain's pacifists might have asked tho same questions with ias much confident presumption. pre-sumption. On August 4 Great Britain was compelled to declare war against Germany, although she was not prepared pre-pared for war. The European war was unexpected by most of the belligerents. Since the outbreak out-break of hostilities books have been written in an effort to define all the reasons, historic, economic and psychological, psycho-logical, which made the war ultimately inevitable. Some day, no doubt, our historians will be writing similar books j about our next w-ar. The extreme pacifist and the extreme militarist are not unlike in some particulars. par-ticulars. Both are constantly employing employ-ing arguments which do not ring true to the average man. |