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Show THE TROUBLE MAKERS. In times of great excitement, whether it bo caused by war, fire, flood, famine or some convulsion of nature, weak minds are always affected, and some individuals in-dividuals who have always been considered consid-ered as rational and normal get ideas into their heads crosswise, and become nuisances in every sense of tho word. Russia is passing through a furnace seven times heated on account of the great number of fanatics coming to the surface immediately following the revolution. revo-lution. In all the other countries there are bands of men and women, small and insignificant when compared with the great masses of the people, who seek to usurp the functions of the established governments at this crisis in the world Js history. The United States is not exempt ex-empt from this source of annoyance any more than the other countries, although it may be said it does not, assume so violent a form. But as we are not yet totally immersed in the war it may be that we shall have to deal with many crack-brained enthusiasts before a treaty of peace is signed. History tells us that the people of all civilized Christian countries approached the year 1000 in fear and trembling, and many thought the end of time was at hand. The same cry has been raised at other epochs, and we dare say pretended prophets will soon rise up and predict the second advent in the .year 2000. Attention will be called to all kinds of signs and portents, and weak intellects will give way in attempts to interpret the prophecy of Daniel one of the rocks upon which so .many brains have been dashed in vain. This is to be expected, ex-pected, for men and women instinctively instinctive-ly turn to religion when tho tempest roars and the waves of trouble roll mountain-high. Simple faith will carry a great majority of them through, and we need not worry about the others. There will be more bother with those who are entirely given over to materialism, material-ism, who discard Christianity and seek to build up a social fabric on earth with everybody and - everything on a di3ad level. These people will try to take advantage ad-vantage of the war to bring society around to their way of thinking, and will preach against all forms of existing exist-ing governments, the government of the United States included. They are making mak-ing trouble at the present time by trying try-ing to bring about a premature peace and render nugatory all the endeavors of the president, backed by a vast majority ma-jority of the patriotic citizens of the country, to so arrange the world's affairs that the power of autocracy will be forever broken and future wars prevented. pre-vented. There is sanity on tho one side and insanity on the other. The president presi-dent is proceeding in a rational manner, while the pacifists are irrational, visionary vision-ary and in some cases vicious. The most menacing features of the situation arise when we discover that the same cloak is used by German sympathizers sym-pathizers and propagandists, by tho I. W. "W. leaders, by the cowardly slackers and all others who do not measure up to the full standard of American citizenship citizen-ship and manhood. All these misfits tell us war is inherently wrong and that they will have none of it, ignoring the fact that the republic was established by the prosecution of one righteous war and saved from dismemberment by means of another great conflict. The chief trouble is that most of these people peo-ple know better, but as they have not the least spark of patriotism in their hearts they sow the seeds of discord while the young merf who love their country and have been taught to reverence rever-ence the flag are getting ready to sacrifice sacri-fice their lives in the name of humanity. We have no patience with the coldblooded cold-blooded I. "W. W. leaders who plan strikes, the propagandists or the young men who should be put in petticoats until after tho war. Neither have we any respect or fellow feeling for the so-called "intellectuals" whose -crani-ums contain but a single idea, and Ebat idea at variance with the opinion of millions of their fellow citizens. But it takes all kinds and classes of people to make a world and, while we must bear with our afflictions af-flictions as patiently as we can, there is no good reason why wc should not protect ourselves to the full extent of our. ability and render futile the efforts of all the undesirables who are plotting and planning against the republic of the United States. We believe in free speech and a free press, but not to the extent of allowing treasonable utterances to go unchallenged unchal-lenged and unpunished, and we would not hesitate to stamp out anarchy with an iron heel. We have no liking for Victor Bergcr, Morris Tlillquit and those other men with German names who are preaching peace in order to save the kaiser and Prussian militarism and we do not believe they should be allowed to continue their efforts to breed dissension here at home while our armies are fighting abroad. These men would overturn the government of the United States in the twinkling twin-kling of an eye if thoy were able, and it is foolish to ive them any leeway. i |