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The Golden Age
w (SVCCZSSOH TO RZLIGIOUS lORUHY
Pnbliehed Ebery Thursday by the Golden Hge Publishing
Company (Inc.)
OriICZS: LGWNDZS BUILDING, ATLANTA, GA.
WILLI&M D. UPSH&W, - - - - Editor
MRS. G. 9. LINDSEY - - Managing Editor
LEN G. BROUGHTON - Pulpit Editor
Price: $2.00 a Year
Ministers fi.so per Year.
tn cases of foreit» address fifty cents should be added it eobei
additional postage.
r.nteied at the Test Office in STtlaela, Ga.,
as second-class matter.
CQuNot~>
The Educational Flurry.
The papers have been commenting very freely pro
and con (and there’s been a good deal of “con”)
about the great educational con-
It Will Clear ference which recently met in
the Atmosphere. Atlanta. The Golden Age has
given a good deal of space to the
general work and purpose of this Conference for
Education in the (South, and has commented edi
torially with honest frankness on some mistakes
being made, we believe, by its great ally—its real
fountain head, friend and helper, the General Edu
cation Board of New York.
It is due our readers everywhere to let them see
both sides of the public’s attitude, and in the space
given to a review of the conference last weeT, writ
ten by one of our staff, we allowed a free expression
of personal views not only by Dr. Hillyer himself,
but by such great religious leaders as Dr. L. G.
Broughton, our Pulpit Editor and the famous pastor
of the Baptist Tabernacle, and Bishop Warren A.
Candler, one of the most stalwart and eloquent rep
resentatives of Methodism in America.
These great leaders, true to God and to men, are
surely entitled to speak for their people, and though
mistakes be made, we are frank to say that the
opinion of such men ought to be carefully weighed
by the great philanthropists who are, we believe,
wishing and seeking to do the greatest good to the
greatest number.
We have from the first been enthusiastic in our
commendation of the general work of this educa
tional movement, and our high personal regard for
some of its organizers and leaders has put that
enthusiasm into double italics. But we confess that
the heart has grown sick over the shutting out of
God and His Christ from the programs of these
Southern conferences.
Why should these meetings not be opened with
prayer ?
Let us not grow “smart” at the expense of rever
ence and let us not forget that Eternity is longer
than Time. Most of these educational leaders are
God-fearing, God-honoring men. Then why build
a system that ignores the supremest thing in their
lives ?
We believe in the unselfish motives of Mr. Rocke
feller, Mr. Ogden, Mr. Peabody and their comrades
in a great cause, and we only hope that they will
determine to put the proper emphasis on God and
His teachings—the most vital thing in education.
Let us do nothing that shall impress our youth
that we are akin to “the nations that forget God.”
It It
President Taft writes: “While a member of the
commission in the Philippines we passed a law pro
hibiting the location of saloons within two miles of
any army post in the islands, and the provision
worked well. I don’t see why it would not work
well in this country. The only difficulty for the
war department is that such a law requires the
exercise of State jurisdiction.”
The Golden Age for April 29, 1909.
If Henry Grady himself had written it or Edward
Carmack had poured forth its blazing, blistering
lines it could hardly have been
A Great Paper more powerful. The truth is
Execrates One and the Memphis Commercial Ap-
Defends the Other, peal is a great paper and its
editor is a yery brilliant man.
The world is right now wide-eyed and wondering
concerning the revolution in Turkey, and we have
seen no portrayal of Abdul Hamid’s horrible career
so graphic and scathing as the following from a
recent editorial in the great Memphis paper, en
titled “The Crisis in Turkey.” Read it —and then
we will think about something else:
“THE CRISIS IN TURKEY.
“Things are doing in the land of the Unspeakable
Turk.
“Tyranny has wrought its perfect work. The
cup of oppression has overflowed, and the oppressed
have risen at last to force it to the oppressor’s
lips. They will not stay until he has drained its
ultimate drop and swallowed the deadly bitterness
of its fatal dregs.
“ Abdul Hamid’s hour has struck. He has sinned
away his day of grace. He has drenched his land
in innocent blood and written his name in charac
ters of mortal woe across the pages of his country’s
history. He has presumed upon the kingly preroga
tives to wreak upon his subjects the bitter malignity
of a cowardly fanaticism. He has steeped the
ermine in crime and debauchery until his name is
stinking and a byword among the nations and an
execration in fihe mouths of his own subjects. His
treachery has estranged his closest friends. His
malignity has made mortal enemies of those who
sought to cleave to him. His caprice has rendered
implacable those who were his partisans. His cowar
dice has earned the contempt of his associates. His
licentiousness has gagged even the court of Con
stantinople. His only champions are those whose
present political interest or blind fanaticism dictate
subservience to the most uncertain of despots.
“He is an old, old man. His white hairs and tot
tering steps are Nature’s credentials to that defer
ence which his iniquity has forfeited at the hands
of mankind. He falters upon the brink of the
grave without one true friend in the world, with a
life of unspeakable crime behind him, with a future
before him whose dread obscurity is pierced by no
comforting ray of hope for mercy at the hands of
that just God before whom he has been merciless
to his fellowmen —confronted by revolution, sur
rounded by treachery, overwhelmed with rebellion.
He is a pitiable spectacle. Even though he deserves
worse than can befall him, he is pitiable.”
The mind whirls and the soul of man staggers be
fore the contemplation of this true, and therefore
horrible, picture of ia modern ruler of mankind.
Rivers of woe, pyramids of human skulls and all
the sickening horrors of the days of Genghis Kahn
rise in a panoramic drama of depravity and blood.
This — this in the twentieth century! This— this in
the very midst of civilized nations tall around! No
wonder that the young Turks have arisen in all the
splendor of awakened humanity —in all the despera
tion of outraged heroism, and determined for the
sake of “their altars and their fires” to abridge
the despotic powers of the black-hearted, red
handed Sultan or drive him from his reeking, totter
ing throne.
With all of this we tare quite agreed, for such
cruelty deserves cessation by extermination. But
the thing we cannot understand is this: How can
this great paper so execrate this human monster
in Europe and let the other —greatest of all monsters
in America go free ?
That American monster on which the Commercial
Appeal smiles its benediction and encouragement
is the red-handed Liquor Traffic!
If it be complained that the comparison is far
fetched and fanciful, we answer that never were
Abdul Hamid’s deeds more cruel than the deeds of
the Liquor Traffic.
If the throne of this European-Asiatic monster
has been built on corruption and sustained in blood
Tlvo Mighty Monsters
we answer that the American Liquor Traffic is even
the same.
If Abdul Hamid has shown no mercy and there
fore deserves none at the hands of God and man,
then let it be remembered that the Liquor Traffic
has wrought without mercy and without conscience
in despoiling’ homes and lives. It has been false to
the government, false to the home, false to the
citizen —false to everything that is sacred and dear.
Verily, in the withering words of Grady, “it is
flexible to cajole but merciless in victory.”
The saloon whose right to live and kill the Com
mercial Appeal has defended, has no wife to bless
it, no mother to pray for it and no bright-eyed
Children to encircle it with their laughter and crown
it with their love! It is known to be the hot-bed
of crime, the trysting place of anarchy, the com
panion of the brothel and the gateway of hell!
And yet this great, blind paper fought for its con
tinuation in Tennessee, and even now, since it has
been outlawed and banished, the Commercial Appeal
continues to make a commercial appeal and what
seems to us a most immoral appeal to the senti
ment of all the prohibition territory, where its
whiskey-laden pages enter, by publishing everything
it can find to prove that' the new law is wrong in
fact and fruitless wherever tried. This, of course,
is hurtful to the community sentiment that must
enforce the law. Its advertisements and its columns
are breeding red-handed Sultans among lawbreakers
every day.
This great, blind paper (with many others like it)
prints beautiful platitudes on its editorial page
about the building of homes and citizenship and yet
it carries for money in its advertising columns the
sword that strikes down that citizenship at the very
altar of its building.
If the editor of the Commercial Appeal will ac
cept the challenge, the editor of The Golden Age
will meet him in Atlanta or go to
A Challenge. Memphis or Nashville and prove —
absolutely prove that the reign,
legal and illegal, of John Barleycorn, has been as
bloody a curse to America as the reign of Abdul
Hamid has been to Turkey.
Let the hour strike again!
* H
The Anti-Saloon League Monthly.
This publication is the successor of “The Georgia
Issue,” which, under the admirable work of Dr. A.
C. Ward, has for several years been the able organ
of the League. We'll done for “The Issue,” wel
come to the “The Monthly!”
The work of the Georgia Anti-saloon League has
changed since prohibition, and its needs have become
different and its forces have had to be readjusted.
The bringing out of the monthly by the League
is one of the results. It is in improved form and
type and it will doubtless furnish that powerful or
ganization an efficient paper and the people of the
whole country the most reliable information about
the prohibition movement, for it is the truth. The
headquarters of the Georgia Anti-Saloon League,
from which in the future the paper will be issued,
is the best informed place on prohibition questions
to be found anywhere.
Apropos of modesty in politics, Allen told a story
one day of an aspiring citizen in Mississippi who
used to quote the familiar saying, 11 The office should
seek the man and not the may the office.” A few
<days later he was observed electioneering for him
self in the old-fashioned style, with whiskey, cigars,
etc. Being reminded of his recent lofty utterances
he answered: “I still maintain my position. The
office should seek the man, but by gad, sah, the man
should be around when the office is seeking for him.”
—'The Century.
One night when Alberta was put to bed she said
her usual evening prayer. Her mother was a little
surprised to hear her add this unusual petition:
“Oh! Lord, make me a better girl; and make my
papa and mamma better too —if you possibly can.”
