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Show Kathleen'Norris Says: Our Enemies Will Pay the Piper I Bell Syndicate WNU Features. ' jM fi We have not had to steal and hate and kill to secure our homes and give our children the greatest advantages the world can supply. By KATHLEEN N ORRIS IN SOME of these heart-shaking heart-shaking days it might be good to remember some facts about ourselves. We are not a belligerent nation, na-tion, nor one inclined naturally natural-ly to wars. We have never had to be, in our splendid isolation, strength and prosperity. We have not had to steal and hate and kill to secure our homes and give our children the greatest advantages the world can supply. Now we are forced into a role for which we were not prepared. We don't like it, and we mean to finish the job as rapidly as we can and then go back to our decencies. But if we MUST get into the world trouble, it is good to know that our slow-gathering military strength is going to be of a power beyond anything that human warfare war-fare has ever known before. It may take us months even years to gather our full momentum, but it is not our way to stop with half-measures, half-measures, and we will not stop until rapacious and quarrelsome nations are thoroughly convinced that their ways are not the right ways. A Wealthy Nation. We operate, in America, almost two-thirds of all the telephones and telegraph systems in the world. We own two-thirds of all the railways. We have all but 20 per cent of all motor cars. We produce 70 per cent of the world's oil, 60 per cent of her wheat and cotton, half the great globe's copper and pig iron, and 40, per cent of the coal and lead output of all countries put together. STARTING NOW This week Kathleen Norris tells about her conversation with a well-known columnist, who believes that it is about time for Germany to break under the strain of withstanding withstand-ing the ever increasing might of the Allied armies; , for us to begin thinking about the peace that will follow our victory . . . Whether that columnist was right or wrong, there is something we must do now . . . We must begin to think and act in terms of the justice and kindness we want that peace to represent. A better world is not made over night, nor made inevitable by the fairest of treaties. breaking anywhere, there was no light. And then suddenly, like the crackling crack-ling and splitting of a lighted fuse, came unbelievable rumors. Women and men were talking to each other in the streets in downtown Washington, Washing-ton, "Did you hear it couldn't be true we heard that the Kaiser is abdicating the Germans are talking talk-ing of a truce." And then headlines five inches high. "Peace peace peace at last!" That was after four years and three months of war, during which time the leader of the English armies ar-mies had admitted that their "backs were to the wall." That was after the enemy had taken much territory terri-tory and possessed himself of oil wells and iron mines. That was after aft-er Czarist Russia had capitulated Two-thirds of all banking resources re-sources are ours. The purchasing power of our population is greater than that of 500,000,000 Europeans, greater than that of a billion Asiatics. Asi-atics. And yet our young fresh college boys and girls inform us firmly yet kindly, now and then, that the system sys-tem that built this stupefying superiority su-periority is somehow all wrong! Now put yourself in the place of a German housewife or a Japanese one, reading these facts-on a Sunday Sun-day morning. Would your heart fail you a little as you asked yourself, "Are these the people, protected by their oceans, strong and tall and educated and accustomed to a thousand thou-sand advantages, luxuries, possessions posses-sions of which MY people know nothing noth-ing are THESE the people of whom our mad warmakers have made enemies?" en-emies?" Oh, to be sure, we weren't ready they may gloat over that. They may gloat over that JUST A LITTLE LIT-TLE WHILE LONGER. We never saw the need of conscripting all our young men into armies, as they did. We never saw the need of starving and denying ourselves so that the money that we have spent for schools and homes, camping and sports, trips and shows and frocks should be molded into bullets and guns. And if these enemy nations had had sane leaders we never WOULD have had need of this military mili-tary preparedness, nor would they. But they have called the tune, and in the end they'll pay the piper. Other Dark Days Recalled. So don't be too much swayed by momentary discouragements. News can't be cheerful just now; it is running run-ning along lines of strategic retreats and stressing the enemies' heavy losses as they take point after point. It did just the same thing in 1917 and 1918. We grew sick of enemy victories: there was no sien of and dropped out of the fight. That was after one of our most famous Washington commentators had informed in-formed us that with her fresh resources re-sources Germany could fight on for at least another five years. Last week I was talking to one of our best-known columnists, a man whose daily comment upon world events is used in more than a hundred hun-dred newspapers. He knows Germany Ger-many well; for ten years he lived in all the European capitals by turns. In the course of a general conversation conver-sation he said that he would be very much in favor of America's adopting adopt-ing the Swiss method of military training for boys, after the war. I am not quite sure what that is, but I believe that instead of drafting all boys for a three-year term they take them for six weeks a year only, keeping it up for all the years between be-tween 18 and 35. Someone picked up his phrase and said hopefully. "After the war? Are we talking of after the war?" Gradual Wearing Down. He said seriously, "Yes, it is almost al-most time for that. We are hammering ham-mering now at a dozen war fronts. The results show very little. But the steady, strengthening blows are deadly. Even little gains by the Allies Al-lies are sickening news for the peoples peo-ples who have slaved and starved, and who are grieving and freezing now, wondering what the outcome must be, knowing that whatever the terms of peace are they will be kinder to them now than a year from now, and kinder a year from now than after five more agonizing years of this." Of course it was what we wanted to hear, but I don't believe he said it for that. It seems to me that when you consider the facts indicated indicat-ed earlier in this article, and a thousand thou-sand others like them, it might very nofisibfv be the truth. |
