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Show H Has Mercy Fled The Earth? AS one, month after month, reads the war news, he is more and moro reminded of Col. H Roosevelt's description of his months of hunting 1 in equatorial Africa. Theie, since a time to H which the memory of man runneth not hack, M there has been a constant warfare between the M myriads of animals great and small, animals, M leptilos, birds of prey the savagery of the an- M imal life that is teeming tliero on plain, in too- M rass and forest. All the myriads of the deer H family, tho zebra, the different species of ante- H lope and tho eland have fled before the rhino- M ceros, tho hippopotamus, the leopard and the M lion. The Hon has been lord, only fighting shy m of the rhino and the hippo. j Tho contest has been unceasing, the cormo- M unit and tho raven have followed in the trail of M the perpetual killing. The serpents have kept up H with and joined in the savagery, and it is dlffl- B cult for men, contemplating the perpetual suf- M ferlng and fear, to understand why such ever- H lasting cruelties shou' e been ordered; and m all tho time tho sun ' jeen shining brightly, M and the songbirds, whea at menaced by birds of M prey, have been singing, and the landscapes have M been brilliant with light, with tropical green and a m wealth of flowers indescribably beautiful. The im- B pression it all gives Is one of sadness, if the ob- JM server has any sensibilities, and he keeps asking M over and over, why all that suffering and all that H fear should have been oidered. The low races M of men and women existing there are not much M advanced over the beasts of the field. "Where a M little bit civilized, the Colonel tells that in one fl place in a few weeks prior to his being there, H a man eating leopard had killed two or three H women, and five or six boys who had been guard- fl ing their little flocks of sheep, and it was a fre- H quent occurrence for a hungry lion to steal into M their slight houses at night and carry off some H member of the family. In those regions, he him- H self slept with camp fires around him every m night and his gun by his side. If one cannot H comprehend why that should be so, to turn to the H European battlefield and see how similar the con- H duct of men has been to that immemorial contest H in the wilds of Africa for untold ages, it is niffi- H cult to fix the place where the acts of men are H much improvement over the savageries of the H lion, the hippo, tho leopard, the buffalo, the cobra H and python. "We are taught that the world -was H given to man that he might subdue it, that he H might subdue the wild beast, convert the wilder H ness into fruitful fields, subdue himself until he Hj became a creature of order and of law, that ho H might drain the swamps, make smooth trails over H the hills and finally with the order established, H bring to himself comforts and luxuries, and at last H i establish justice and build temples to learning H and awaken his own soul until the atrocities H of this world should bo disposed of. Finally, in H tho procession of the years, the Saviour came, H and for nearly two thousand yoars his teachings H have been calling on the children of men to do H away with their savageries and to learn the H blessing of peace and good will, but suddenly, in H the most enlightened centers of the world, where H there was the most ostentatious worship of the H Prince of Peace, the nations all at once sprang H to arms, and now, for wellnigh eighteen months H they have adopted only tho method of the lion m and the leopard, the rhino, the cobra and the H python of ibarbarous Africa. It is not a good out- H look for humanity. It shakes one'p faith In the H ultimate humanity and salvation of mankind. For H the strong to prey upon the weak has been H the rule from the heglnnlng, and though, the ln- H telligence of men has greatly increased, the H methods of nations seem to be the same as in tho wilderness with the wild beasts; the strong prey upon the weak. The struggle of the financier in tho great city, while different in method is not different in principle from that of tho lion in the wilderness when he springs upon the prey. Europe is one vast house of mourning, and if the powers there do not swiftly come together and adjust their differences, the effect is liable to bo to make millions of men and women behove that there is no God in heaven, no justice on the earth. |