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■ EDITORIAL. RAGE The Atlan VJii< THE HOME PAPER - vihat voo KICKIN' FOR-OBOuT NoT GETTING- ft (?AlS<L- I HAVEN'T HAT? A RAISE SINCE 1 WENT To WORK THERE x Ten Years y r ft go ^ m Goods Brought to This Country In American Ships Should Have the Benefit of a Discriminatory Duty. THE ATLANTA GEORGIAN PublinhrO Every Afternoon Except Sunday By THE GEORGIAN (V»M».\NY At 20 EuhI Alabama St.. Atlanta, Oh Entered a« •ecnnd-elass matter at pofftofflce at Atlanta, under act of March 3.1871 Subscription Price—Delivered by- carrier. 10 cent* a week By mail, $f>.00 a year. Payable in Advance The Reason Why By HAL COFFMAN Garrett P. Serviss Writes on The T ragedy of Life on Mars In That Planet,WhichSeems to Have Reached Last Act in Drama of the World, Life and Intelligence Are Pitted Against Inanimate Nature. The tariff bill goes to the Senate looking like an intoxicated orator with a mouth full of phrases about universal love. It is a tariff bill windy with academic doctrines and prodigal with a charity that begins abroad. It was drawn with one eye on the text books of Stuart Mill and Adam Smith and the other upon the ferule of the White House. WHAT REMAINS IS FOR THE SENATE TO WHIP THIS THING INTO REASON AND SENSE. It is foolish for a man to buy things he doesn t want. And it is foolish for a nation to trade where there is no gain. A tariff bill should be drawn so as to encourage trade where trade is profitable, and to discourage trade where trade is dam aging. There is neither virtue nor wisdom in trading every thing with everybody. Free trade—as a direct object of devo tion—is no better than free love. A proud nation, like a fair woman, should be discriminating about its trade—as about everything else. What we want of this tariff bill is the opening up of new trade relations along the particular lines that will help to make life more livable for the people of the United States. The tariff bill as it stands is not at all particular about the United States. The House has sent to the Senate a tariff bill that reads like a missionary document in the interest of the unknown and the unborn. It takes care of all that is irrelevant and unrelated to us. BUT IT IS RECKLESS OF RECIPROCITY AND RECIPROCITY—THE LAW OF GIVE AND TAKE —IS THE LAW OF ALL REAL POWER AND PROGRESS. It is a law that will not yield to legislatures and will not submit to be defied. The American people voted overwhelmingly last Fall in favor of the principle of protection. Congress has no mandate to tear down the walls of trade-discrimination. It has no call to flood the country with bad bargains. The American people be lieve in trade that strengthens the industrial organization of the nation—not in trade that weakens that organization. The point is that THE FREE LIST SHOULD BE FREE TO NATIONS THAT GIVE US NEW COMMERCIAL FREEDOM AND EXPANSION, AND SHOULD NOT BE FREE TO NA TIONS THAT DON T. * As a part of this same policy the people look to the Senate to confirm and establish the principle that American ships are worth more to us than foreign ships, AND SHOULD HAVE CORRESPONDING CONSIDERATION AT OUR CUSTOM HOUSES GOODS BROUGHT TO THIS COUNTRY IN AMERICAN SHIPS SHOULD HAVE THE BENEFIT OF A DISCRIMINAT ING DUTY. If existing trade conventions with foreign countries stand in the way of this sensible arrangement, they should be put out of the way. FOR IT 18 NOT A LITTLE MATTER, BUT A MATTER OF ENORMOUS IMPORTANCE, THAT THE UNITED STATES SHOULD CEASE TO BE A SEA SHY NATION- SHOULD GET ITSELF SHIPS, AND SHOULD BECOME ONCE MORI, AS OF OLD, A MIGHTY PRESENCE UPON THE WATER AS WELL AS UPON THE LAND. By GARRETT P. SERVISS. N O stage was ever set for such a tragedy as the planet Mars presents. The first act in such a drama consists of scenes from Chaos. The huge planet Jupiter offers us a spectacle of that kind, in its streaming belts of thick clouds and its whirling vapors, glowing like steam above a furnace. The second act is represented by the earth, with its fertile crust, its cool, invigorating atmosphere, and its # life-sustaining seas that give birth to the clouds which, condensing on the mountains, furnish the rains and set the rivers flowing. The closing act is the role of Mars, where the seas have van ished. the atmosphere has thinned out, the rivers have disappeared, the continents have turned into deserts, and life, driven into a corner, is battling against final extinction That there is yet intelligent life on Mars is the universal belief of all the observers whom Mr. Lo well has gathered about him at his Flagstaff Observatory, where the extraordinary phenomena of that wonderful planet are studied as nowhere else in the world. Superior to Us, They Say. More than that, they tell us, with ever increasing emphasis, that the people of Mars, compelled by necessity, have developed a command over natural forces which would seem miraculous if , exhibited upon the earth. With them it has become sim ply a question of BRAIN POW ER AGAINST THE INANIMATE POWERS OF NATURE. They have nights and days of the same length as ours. They have seasons almost precisely corresponding with ours, except that they are each twice as long. But their oceans are dried up, no rains fall (though there may be dews), and nearly all the atmos pheric moisture is alternately locked up in one or the other of the polar snow caps. In such a situation no vegeta tion can flourish unless artificial ly stimulated by a gigantic sys tem of irrigation, ^nd without vegetation, which builds up the protoplasmic elements of life out of mineral substances, animal ex istence is impossible. But whence can the inhabitants of Mars derive the water needed for irrigation? The answer given is that they get it periodically from the melting of the polar snows. Being without seas and rivers, they have no other source of supply. On Mars the reign of universal peace must have begun ages ago, introduced not by moral or sen timental considerations, but by the necessity of uniting all the engineering skill, all the inven tive powers, and all the physical forces of the entire population of the planet in a common battle for life! There fleets of battleships (if they ever had any) lie like the bones of prehistoric monsters, whitening in the sun blaze on boundless deserts that were once seas. Metal of Thin Iron. The m^tal of their cannon hag been turned into enormous en gines for pumping water and for dredging ditches. The only thought of their inventors is of improved means for controlling the slowly lessening supplies of moisture that, once in about two of our years, may be drawn away from one of the poles, while the summer sun,shine is dissolving its thin snows. This universal concentration of mental energy upon a single aim is conceived as having developed upon Mars a knowledge of the hidden forces of nature, such as has, up to the present, merely been dreamed of on the earth. They would need such knowledge to enable them to achieve the superhuman works which the telescope appears to reveal: WE have Just begun to learn how to use electricity in the me chanic arts, but THEY may hay* unlocked THE SECRET FORCES INCLOSED IN' THE ATOMS OF MATTER which our science has recently assured us exist without showing us how to utilize them. Only by such suppositions can the "canals,” hundreds of miles wide, and thousands of miles long, be accounted for. if, as th» Flagstaff observers insist, thoss objects are really of artificial ori gin. It should be said, however, that in Mr. Lowell’s opinion th.e bands called canals are, in fact, irrigated belts. Real Canals Within Them. The real canals within them are invisible, while the progres sive darkening of these belts, as the polar melting increases, is due to the growth of vegetation, stimulated by the water. After the world life drama closes there is left an empty stage, and this Is represented by the moon. The lunar world has lost all its water. Its tragedy is fin ished. The actors are all dead. Millions of years ago there may have been a battle for life there, like that which now appears : to be raging on Mars. And millions of years in the future the stage of the earth will probably be set for a similar tragedy. For, to the eyes of the overlooking gods (to change a little Shakespeare's figure): “All the sky’s a stage.- And all the worlds and suns are merely actors.” THE DISAPPOINTED By ELLA WHEELER WILCOX. T HERE are songs enough for the hero Who dwells on the heights of fame; I sing for the disappointed— For those w ho have missed their aim. I sing with a careful cadence For one who stands in the dark, And knows that his last, best arrow’ Has bounded back from the mark. p I sing for the breathless runner, The eager, anxious soul. Who falls with his strength exhausted. Almost in sight of the goal. For the hearts that break in silence. With a sorrow all unknown, For those w ho need companions. Yet walk their ways alone. There are songs enough for the lover* Who share love's tender pain; I sing for the one whose passion Is given all in vain. For those whose spirit comrades Have missed them on their way, 1 sing, with a heart o'erfiowing, This minor strain to-day » And I know r the Solar System Must somewhere keep in space A prize for that spent runner Who barely lost the race. ft For the plan would be imperfect Unless it held some sphere That paid for the toil and talent And love that are wasted here. A brave man has lost a game fight. For a week some millions of people will talk of it with wonder and admira tion. Then the name of B. Sanders Walker, of Macon—a name unknown outside of Geor gia till ten days ago—will fade from the public memory, and the tongues of men will wag about other affairs. Walker, like many another man whose fame never reaches the public car, knew how to fight death smilingly and to meet defeat without a whimper. There was no battle to be fought for his country, no glory to be gained, no martyrdom to be en dured that the world might be bettered for his suffering. Accidentally poisoned, ho declared in the face of his doctors that he would not die. For more than a week he kept up a de termined struggle—the most cheerful of the circle that sur rounded him, the bravest and best comforter of his sorrowing wife and wide eyed, troubled little boy. The newspapers carried the story to the country, and the country, quick to sympathize, became absorbed in the fight. Be cause Walker was a man of finer fiber than common, because he was known and loved in his own community, the interest in him was intensified. From one end of the nation to the other came messages of hope and encouragement. Noted physicians em ployed the telegraph wires to advise the medical men in imme diate charge of the case. Every day came crowds of the dying man s fellow townsmen to ask after him—came, and were wel comed to the sick room, where the patient 's demeanor seemed to belie the doctors' assurances that there was no hope. Then the end came, and after a few hours of generous tribute the coun try will turn to other affairs, and the story of this brave man will soon fade into the mists of yesterday. And yet it is a story that ought to be remembered. Not ' often do such heroic struggles against fate become known. I When they do. Aheir memory becomes a tonic to humanity. All over this land are men and women fighting mortal maladies— | not for themselves, for such men are not afraid to die; not for glory, for there is little glory in dying by inches—but because they do not want to leave destitute those dependent on them, or sadden them by the thought that death soon must break the ties that so long have seemed unbreakable. Looking death in the face with a smile, knowing how des perate are the odds, yet never once yielding to panic or to despair, such men are real Americans. In war they would be heroes. Why are they any less so because they die v-jt.hont knowing the rapture of the fight but only its long, cruel bit terness? j Brave Fight of a Real American These men do not se*e the reason why they are p assed over while others ar e promoted. But you can see it clearly enough. The reason is in their own hands. Puzzle: Find Mr. Suburbs' Chickens • • • bj^fera