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Show THE. DAWN OF A NEW ERA AND now this Armageddon has opened and era in which the old order seems dissolved as in a cataclysm. cata-clysm. Empires in China, in Russia, in Austria, in Germany are dissolving like storm clouds. Nearly half the human hu-man race have passed from despotism to republics. The terrific machinery of war that for two generations had boon organized at Berlin has been pulverized, pul-verized, never to darken this earth again. New republics have emerged out of tho wreckage. Asia has been freed from the cruel desolation where the Turk had planted his foot. Africa has been freed from the murderous greed of the Hun. Japan is entering and in due time China will enter into the civilized community of nations. Some twenty different peoples have joined in arms to resist the menace of domination domi-nation by one. The common cause of civilization in peril has roused free men from Newfoundland and the Mississippi Mis-sissippi to the Ganges, from the Cape of Good Hope to Australia, New Zealand, Zea-land, and Japan. Miracle, above all, after nearly a century and a half, Britons and American Ameri-can citizens of various races have fought side by side, as brothers in arms, and almost again as one people with a common fatherland. Nothing so deep-seated as this, so potent in possible enlargement as this, has ever happened in the civilized world since the Catholic and feudal settlement in the age of the Crusades, when Europe had at least the bond of a common faith, and of a common spirit of chivalry, chiv-alry, loyalty, and honor. With all its vices and its limitations, mediaeval Europe had some common ideal, oven if it misused and abusod it. Our common ideal, we trust, is far grander and wider, more wise and more humane. 'Tis a weighty task that lies on us; to keep to it steadfastly, stead-fastly, to make it live and grow to Peace among Men. This awful time of bloodshed, ranging rang-ing from the Arctic Circle to the furthest fur-thest Pacific, has given new meaning to all the forces that have been gathering gath-ering up for a century, and it has discovered many new forces and brought together former enemies. Only twenty years ago Britain and America, Britain and Franco, were at arm's length. Can Britain, France, the United States, Italy, ever be parted part-ed again? Will not the races of Rub-e Rub-e f sia, Turkey, of the Central Empires, $ , owe their free life to us now to-fe to-fe gather' the vanguard of civilization? Lv Four years of superhuman strain & have transformed the face of the m world. East and west, north and Op south, have come together as broth- iju ers, in ways that they never knew. 8f Humanity has come into its own in W Peace and Union! Inventions to use ', and control the material earth, which F were dreamed of for generations, have suddenly become mighty realities. The Roman poet said: "Wings were not given to man." Man has developed I wings! There is no limit now to what "air transit may do for human Inter- fc- course. Express service, postal serv-aft serv-aft ice, will soon be by air, even if we do Wh not scrap our railroads altogether. HT Submarine navigation has recast the ft?,'1 whole condition of naval construction, w$ oven If we do not scrap our dread- W, noughts altogether. At any rate, there never again shall be the old race fl q, armaments, no huge standing ; armies, no dominion of the seas so as to menace the rest of the world. t The barbarous blood tax must cease. Nevermore shall the nations have to offer up their sons to Moloch. The hideous waste of labor in engines of destruction more than half the en- tire cost of government must cease. And with the waste of labor for 'destruction 'de-struction there must be ended also the waste of labor in debasing luxuries and wanton extravagance. ij-v ' It will be a new world in this 3? twentieth century. Shall we be new jj men, new women, worthy to use it H " rightly? Frederick Harrison, in the Wjpt London Chronicle. t |