The Oregon daily journal. (Portland, Or.) 1902-1972, November 17, 1912, Page 61, Image 61

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America
If These Advocates
International Amity Had
Their Way the Balkans
Would Have
AR, which is as old as the hills,
has scored another, victory over
' peace, which ought to be eter
nal, but itn'u -
When the daring Montenegrins made
their first sortie to kindle the flames that have
been lighting the Balkans, it was of heroic
record that their women cheered them on;
and when i the larger 'masses of Bulgaria,
Servia arid Greece were flung out to the fight
ing line, their. women bade them go, and stay.
Peace, so far as that territory of $00 years'
human hatred was concerned, was not able
to. find so much as a girts fingertip nn which
to nestle.
, Half a millennium of rapine, loot, mur
r4er and slavery does not conduce to fraternity
and content; the women who cheered on their '
loved ones to battle with the Turks may well
be excused for choosing patriotism rather than
meek fortitude for their guide.
. But peace, although defeated time and
agairi-although less defensible perhaps there
than it has been since the war of 1813--has
its ' stanch partisans, , even in the crisis where
thdpratection of every human right to life
and liberty seemed to make war inevitable:
ana me stancnesi, me most insistent, the least
dismayed among them all, even while those
very Balkans have been running red with the
'blood of oppressers and oppressed, have been
women. '
'.' They are not Balkan women; America
'arid Europe have contributed their voids to
the cause of peace but not from out that
fitiless ring of fire, hemmed in between moun
tains and sea. .With their vision unbiased by
the passions concentrated under centuries of
xvrongs, they have had faith in this war, as
in others, that all might have been well if
the principles of international peace were only
Universally recognized and universally en
forced. T
O OFFER that sublime faith to the women In
whose memories the crimes of Ottoman ma
rauders lived and cried for vengeance, while the
outrages upon their sisters just across the border
tines, were almost dally horrors, would seem like cruel
zaockery. ,
' -- But to the wider, less overwrought judgment of those
women Who are the pioneers among their sex in prepar
ing the empire of universal peace, it has slemed the sim
plest, most feasible solution that can be imagined. And
among them are some whose knowledge of both peace
and war, at the very gates of the hell that opened with
the first battle In the Balkans, has been gained at first
Jiand. under the very circumstances of anxious strain and
conflict . Which have kept all Europa trembling ou the
brink of the abyss engulting live nations of the world. .
' One ot them Is Carmen Sylva, itoumania's Queen
0 'Elisabeth. From her Castd Pelea, In the Carpathians;
from he capital, Bucharest, Bhe has gazed forth for
years Over tha embroiled nations of Europe, seeing here
the dread horrors of the Crimea, there the appalling de
feat of proud France;- again the humiliation of Greece,
and Utter the spoliation of Turkish Africa. She has
watched the bloody march of events with the eyes of a
queen, of a mother, of a poet and, too, of a woman versed
la all the mysteries of statecraft; And this is her verdict:
I CANT UNDERSTAND BUTCHERY
v."- "Oh, I simply long for peace pray and long for It.
' Z never could understand why people butcher and kill
one another instead of "talking over their differences. I
always say that when you kill a man ll Is not only his
body which is destroyed, but his brain. You cannot get
poople to understand this. When they do, we shall have
no more wars. For every man killed in war you make
; th world poorer by so much power which, had he lived,
' could, and probably would, have been used for the benefit
of humanity. I never can understand the meaning of
frontiers. There should be none where Cultivated minds
and arts and letters are concerned."
t Well, Li.may.be that the stage of culture, arts and
letters Is top far in the future of both the Balkans and
Turkey to allow for reason over their differences. But it
was the same with Italy and Austria, in their day: and
It has been the same with Gernjany and France ever
since theirs itber bloody war to end an impasse, or
rmd preparedness to forefend it.
The queen of Roumanla, throughout a long life,
has urged the common peace with voice and pen, on
the simple, homely ground of humanity's claim to its
Individuals above the wraths of patriotism raging in'
' 1 he nations' little groups.
Beside her, an ally so powerful that her ability has
mihed her equal to Carmen Sylva, is the Baroness von
Mittner. whose home is in Vienna, the center of those
;fyBj.'hem : of diplomacy , tnaso lcaaitiu-atBe(i
.wipe's emjulfment In the Isalkan conflagration;
When Baroness von. Buttner published her enorhnl
nok, "Lsy Down Your Arms it proved to b T t he
' I'm-U Tom's Csbln" Of the peace movement, then
1 hsu'nt. it tha influence of the Written word could be
1 o .i through all its ramifications in men's souls, the
, 1 .ability u great that this one book might prove t
Carnage
W
hie 01'iixoiJ cuiiDAY
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of
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-i. ""'"'4;
Carjj?e cfvMte Queen
Mart Mrs 3ev
Preached PQece ij the Orient"
have done more toward spreading the realization of the
need for,, peace than any other single factor which has
fostered the propaganda. It brought home to the peoples
of the world, and more especially to those of Europe, the
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C IV I Ih . ,1n;;A.:? in W4r anywhere-whichever the hemisphere, whatever I li iA-J 1 ift' T 1 Iff ' "J
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WIW 5 AALL WE DO rO!5 WOAVLAI
i
IfRE shouldn't be any old maids here. If
there are, their spinsterhood must be
blamed on the finickiness of the three old
maids of Dee. for this whole country is
now driving toward tne virile condition oi Marit
Twain's cmp but west,, when the arrival-cof the'
firat woman raised more excitement than two dog
fights and a poker game.
Jhere was a chance, and only, ten years. ago
T
journal, i o:vixai:d, lu.l-av
II C4 III ill --, V,"V) 5 . I
mad- extravagance of cruelty and suffering Incident to
warfare as even the moat terrible of wars could not da
Her life has been one continual' war. upon war, and ao
universally haa she' been acknowledged as a militant
champion of peace that she was the one woman of th
wIioIm world auinltteu li tuo "opening eeaaiuii oX 'lb
Hague tribunal.
Wit anywhere whichever the hemisphere, whatever
the vause-is admittedly a defeat for these two famous
women; yet both may be relied upon to return to the
charge with all their eloquence at the first sign of hope
for the halting of hostilities. It Is so with their comrades
in peace elsewhere, and under conditions which of late
have been equally disheartening. ' ,
in South America the woman who parallels their
efforts and is revered as they are by the millions whom
she would save from their fatuity tor war is Benora de
Costa, one of the brilliant minds of Buenos Ayres. In,
her own land Senora de Costa has the happiness of.
Knowing that a. century of warfare between Argentina
and Chile, because of boundary disputes, was ended by
-i-esort to arbitration, with a treaty concluded under ...
which, for a period of years ensuing, all question! in dis
pute between the two countries Bhould be settled in the
same wise manner. Under the beneficent assurance of
peace, Chile converted her gunboats Into Improvements
for rivers and harbors; Argentina transformed her war
ships into a merchant marine.
A SPLENDID MONUMENT
And on the crest of the towering Andes, where the
frontiers of the two countries meet, a splendid monument
has been erected, in the image of tuat Prince of Peace
whose symbol Is the holy cross.
There is always something splendid about the pirate
and the buccaneer. Argentina's quarrel with Chile had '
sufficient bigness of booty to make a big policy of peace
comprehensible to the minds of those greater foes among
the South American nations. But the rest of the quarrel
some continent's troubles have been those people have
with petty pickpockets; and peace with honor and In
dustrywhich decent arbitration would be forced to give,
makes no appeal to professional thieves whose highest
ambition is to get away with the loose cash.
A good, big, healthy man's size war in South America
would probably find Senora de Costa the most powerful
barrier in its path to actual conflict; but for the little
pickpockets of Nicaragua and Mexico, all the arbitration
In the world could mean only an alternative of work or
jail;. and, by unanimous consent, the whole gang of them
prefer revolution.
In far India there Is a woman who, under social con
ditions even more inhibitory than those confronting a
lady in Buenos Ayres, has labored In the cause of uni
versal peace, and has made her Impress on public opinion.
She Is Helen . Dunhlll, a native oriental, for all her
homely western name. She has been seen In the United
States, her red silken draperies a brilliant fleck of color
n the streets of Boston, her bared head holding the eyes
of the curious as far as they could follow it.
To her, born In the land that knew the horrors of the
mutiny, and the equal horrors of Its suppression, war
embodies the last and most awful of national calamities;
and she has labored late and early to preserve to her
native land the blessings of its peace, meager to the
starvation of millions though Its fruits have been. 8he
is one of those who. with Rumania's hopeful queen,
believe that somehow, In the appeal to reason, those ills
m
at that, when every man, almost, had a full, fair
and square chance to get married; for every Jack
there was a Jill, with the trifling exception of
about one in, say, every twenty-five, which was not
knows that one matt in every two dozen m't 'fit whoja population, there were 104.4 under which dSiStfn 'try?? account ?othem ce.lh Nobo'dy , '
to be a "husband; and she lives in a sort of mustaches ougnfc to grow for every' 100 that could else does. Probably fhe.only authority who mlghutaeki .
chronic doubt as to whether her own husband isn't be turned up at them, -, - JStufl Jffecupoth"' .
that one. But now, with jtho cenaugof 1910, jt tppeart , , it may b in ths air.
f - ' V ' J K 1 " i ' ' '
v?irv i t.r i nim i iih iiiih iifrcfniH ih. j ii w wuiiimu TXTn on it waa rvrrv iron mar rmTi i n tr iiiihim inr ljiib nui Liienn ma uvit i uaoei ut Buu.iuuuus iu vt3intr.an
ff ' LXf one lvoted to the welfare of her ex, and It Is imaU
I itri f v t ' f"- Ml ' wonaer inai sne. wun ner einter uvut ui wi int
Counfess e&re voo Boos, Ufa -(hmkttbenMsterPettcrttttirgJt
can all be cured for which" men fly to war. Meanwhile,
with peace maintained, she has done much to alleviate
the burdens of her sex In India, and more to enlighten
the world outside as to the ills that need amelioration.
In the United States, where, happily, no menace of
war darkens the skies, the growth of active sentiment
among women has been exceptionally wide. American
women, ' with their quick Imagination and extensive Cul
ture, have unhesitatingly accepted Sherman's picturesque
and emphatic definition of war as something not merely
to be admitted, but to be realised. So richly dowered
has their sex been through the calm content of peace
that they feel, nly too keenly, how true are the words
of Carmen Sylva, and how wisely all nations might adjust
their differences if they would but hearken to the coun
sels of peace and reason.
Here In the west, at the very gateway of any strife
that can come from the east, is Mrs. Joslah Evans
Cowles, whose labors In charge of the peace propaganda
for the General Federation of Women's Clubs is repre
sentative of the American genius for organization, now
showing itself as pronounced among our women as among
our men. That is the American way of achieving any
big things; and a woman like Mrs. Cowles, whose home
In Los Angeles has given hen a shrewd appraisement of
what war could mean to us It a foe could cross the broad
'pacific, is able to mold and direct the opinion of her sex
not only through the extensive agencies at the disposal of
the federation, but also with , a fine perception of the
genuine, if unacknowledged, need this country has for
arbitration in place tif ruinous war.
She embodies the newer fighting front of the feminine
peace forces, for so many years led In rather lonely
prominence by such famous national figures as Belva A.
Lockwood and, later, by Mrs. May Wright Bewail Per
haps of all the prominent advocates of peace among her
sex, Mrs. Lockwood in this country is most inclined to be
militant for the cause. She has not proposed the In
consistency of offering battle for peace, but she can hit
harder in argument than most of those who are partisans
of war. Her lectures on arbitration, her attacks on the
armaments of the nations, have furnished some of the
most cogent campaign material heard In the endless
controversy.
She, like Mrs. Bewail, has ever borne In mlnfl the
cause of woman, so often utterly overlooked amid the
passions that nourish strife. Mrs. Sewall's life has been
fates fa fOCFemfaM'
That was the period of the census of 1900,
one devoted to the welfare o! her sex, and It Is small
wonder that she, with her sister advocates of all that
can advance her sex, should unfailingly pursue the
Ideal of universal peace, and, as president of the Inter
national Council of Women, should have lent to It all
the weight of her prominence and personal lhtluence.
This country counts among its 'women partisans, of
peace many thousands now wno belong to the younger
generation, women who bring to bear upon their favorite
cause the powerful fascination of beauty, In an age
when woman s natural charms are no reproach to -her
claim to prominence, as they were when first she asserted
her right to be something more than a deaf mute in the
body politic. ,
8uch a woman is Countess Hildegarde von Boos, of
' 'New York, whose stately beauty and magnetic personal
ity sufficed to carry to success the monster peace meeting
held in New York a year ago. A member of the ancient
Boos xu Waldeck family of Germany and Sweden, gifted
.. with a magnificent mezzo-soprano voice, ardently devoted
to the relief of suffering, this new American won from
Europe has by the sheer force of her sympathetic nature
inspired the spirit of peace and arbitration more directly
here than it would have been passible for her even In
Europe.
If she Is Individual In her beauty and labors, her value
to the cause Is of the same exquisitely feminine typo
which hs marked the efforts of Mrs. Elmer Black, of
S.-New York, who is qhalrman of the American Peace and
Arbitration League and held the important position of
vice president of the third national peace congress, at
Baltimore, last year. Mrs. Black, like her predecessors
In the movement, is equally active In her advocacy of
movements In aid of her sex, and she holds the presi
dency of the Woman's Progressive Economlo League.
The cause oi peace. In the United States, bids fair to
gain many more active partisans among women than It
has gained elsewhere, not merely because they appreciate
its advantages more keenly, but because their whole
trend of organization for years past haa been toward
ameliorating the condition of women in that industrial
struggle, which, when all Is said and done, Is but on
degree removed from the more cruel contention- of real
warfare, In driving the weakest to the wall.
that even the dead line of man's last eligibility hag
been crossed. There are half a dozen men in every
hundred who won't be able to find mates, unless
the divorce industry keep-up' its gay, familiar pace
and give them second chance at some woman who's
presumed to be, but generally isn't, disgusted
enough with matrimony already.
I
T'S BAD enough now; but what will happen If we
keep It up is something- which even the daring '
census takers haven't the nerve to surmise. Tha
worst of It Is, there's scarcely a section of the
country to which the lone male can betake himself and
find females in sufficient numbers to give him any better
chance.
And such is the tendency to monopoly In this age of
trusts, that hundreds of men every year are being con
victed of bigamy.
You can eee the figures for yourself. Not counting
Alaska, or Hawaii, Porto Rico and other outlying pos
sessions, the males In the United States number 47.33.277
and the females only 44,639,99. That gives 1WJ males to
every 100 females, while in 11W0 we had 101.4 males for .
100 females.
You might think that Immigration accounts for it,
the time-honored theory being that the hardy men go to
new countries to take the chances of a livelihood, while
the women stay home and, after the first tears of part
ing, jaw about them.
Well, there's a good deal to it. Among our foreign
born whites the males number 129.2 for every 100 females.
But right among the native-born population the propor
tlon stands 102.7 to 100. So there is something out of
balance all the way around. As a matter of cold, bach
elorhood fact, the excess of the men is greatest Just
where the influx of aliens is still lowest In the Pacifio
states the males number 126.4 to the 100 females; in the
mountain states, they are 127.4 to 100; In the west north
central states, where, it is true, the immigrant la ln
creasing in numbers, the proportion is 109.9 to 100; and
in New England, where also many aliens have mad
their ipmes, it Is 99.3 to 100.
We might as well look the whole situation In the face,
now that we are about It. The middle Atlantic states,
comprising those three commonwealths of New York,
Pennsylvania and New Jersey, which have Immigrant
pouring into their towns and industries all the time,
show the proportion of 103.3 males to WO females; th east
north central states give 106 males to 100 females, th
average of the whole country; the south Atlantic states
give 101.2, the best balance of any section; the cast
south central, 101.9; the west south central, 107.2.
The woman who, noting these fractions of men. con
eludes she got the fraction, is mistaken: the census bu
reau means neither to corroborate her judgment nor to
Insult her husband.
A VARIABLE PROBLEM
If the Immigrant factor doesn't solve it, neither I
It solved when we descend to particulars of race and
color.
The negroes actually show a preponderance of f
males-93.9 males to 100 females. . ThelndianS show an
excess of. males smaller than that of the country at
large. 103,5 to loo. . The Chinese, ot course, show a vast
number of men In comparison with womin; they are on
a 14-to-l basis. The Japs are 7 to 1. But both these alien
peoples Immigrate as men, almost exclusively, and their
numbers are trivial, anyway.
Whe n we study the differences between city and coun
try, we find that city life seems to have a remarkably
equalizing effect on the sexes; but that doesn't mean that
babies born in town are more likely to be girls, anymore
than babies born In the country. The males, per 100
females In the cities, number only 101.7. The males In
the country number 109.9. The census bureau experts "
' find that, In the cities of three great centers of popula
tionthe New England, south Atlantic and east south
central states the femules outnumber 'the males. This
happens in spite of the fact that immigrants concentrate
In the- cities, and are male by a large majority. It is
argued by the experts that the city presents so many
more demands tor female labor that the gliis go front
country to town more numerously than do the men.
When It comes to Individual cities, New York IS
about the only large one where the two sexes make an
even break In-numbers. In Philadelphia there are only
$6.4 men to 100 women; and the man who thinks-that this
will give him a show to get one of Philadelphia's girls
had better move quick. There are' few in the United
States who compare with them. Seattle, with 1S6.2 men
to 100 women, could spae almost enough men to make
Philadelphia an abode of perfect bliss; and Portland,
Ore., with 134.5, could' heltf ut Baltimore, which, with
only 92.4 males to the loo females, is lowest among- the
eight citios of more than half a million Inhabitants. '
And Baltimore will run, wrestle or fight Philadelphia'
for. the prise of womanly beauty any day In th week"
A