The Chemawa American, June 01, 1915, Page 11, Image 13

THE CHEMAWA AMERICAN
11
monstrous folly and leave it chastened and purified for period a of enlight
enment, of growth, of development such as can be faintly but dreamed
of. Even now, while the battles are yet raging, while the passions of
men are at the highest heat, a sacred calm seems to be settling over the
world .
All the petty voices of spite and envy and discontent are hushed, as
if listening for the great voice that is soon to speak forth snmmoning
the children of men to renewed and higher endeavors. This is to be
your day, young people. This is your heritage. Never has life been so
significant, never so full of stimulus, never so rich in opportunity. In
deed, I had rather be a citizen of America during the next ten years
than a man of any other nationality at any other time in the history of
the world.
Iii dwelling upon the great war, it is needful to proceed with great
caution. So far as we are able to judge, the frightful conflict is yet to
reach its climacteric. The war may last for months; it may last for
years. Even as onlookers we are too much in the thick of it all to give
its issues the calm consideration that they require. It is not my prov
ince even to attempt a portrayal of the crimson scenes of carnage, the
wild delirium of battle, the onset of charging hosts, the awful thunder
of bursting shells, the frenzy of the counter attack, the thrust of count
less bayonets, the deeds of heroism, the agony of the wounded, the
groans and curses, the stillness of death. Day after day we read of
these things, but we cannot envisage them. The piercing horror of it
all is lost to us. Nor is it for me to speak of the tragedy no less real
of those who are left at home of the families the tens of thousands of
families in Belgium, in Russia, in France and England and Germany,
in which the father, the brother, the husband, the boy, will never be
seen again. Ah, the deep pathos of the maids who will never be wives,
the wives who will never be mothers, the mothers from whose arms is
wrung all that life holds most dear! Not for them the wild joy of battle
only a dull despair that knows no respite.
Nor is it my province to analyze the causes of the Great War, to say
that it is merely a colossal game played by kings and potentates, who,
mistaking the mad motive of aggrandizement for glory and honor, have
plunged their peoples into this maelstrom of death in order to gain that
which at best can be but a mockery; to say that it is due to the long
gathering hate that ferments in racial antipathies; or in the unseeing
instinctive movement of great human masses seeking greater economic
freedom, giving their lives blindly, that their children and children's
children may earn their bread under conditions less hard, less hopeless;
or to hold, with Nietzsche, that war is simply an inevitable factor in the
great scheme of evolution whereby the temper of nations is tested, the