Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page.

nr> EDITORIAL PAGE THE ATLANTA GEORGIAN Published by THE GEORGIAN COMPANY At 20 Hunt Alabama ft. Atlanta O* f titered a« tirconil-' Ians matter at poatnfflct at Atlanta. under art of March 3, 1*7* KRS1 S SI NDAY AMERICAN and THE ATl.ANT \ GEORGIAN will era anywhara h. lha Uni tad Btataa a Mexico, ontl for f 00 three months for $1 7S, -dx mont! f •• * and ona >"ar I M made as of •. - .t • • a tea /,r. application Walking on the Mountain lops Across the Continent. Would You like Th*l Sensation ? Read a Good History of the Literature of a Great People. Cepfrtgltt 1*1 A. hr star Onmpaay Old Charlemagne went to see Emperor Hugo, said to be hand somer than himself. When he got to Constantinople, he bragged so much that he nearly lost his life. The beautiful girl Aude said when she heard that Roland was dead: “May it not please Ood or his saints, or his angels that I should live after Roland, ” and died promptly. You ought to know such a girl. Buffon, the great naturalist, wrote his principal work over eleven times. Think of that, when you are discouraged! And the same servant every day for sixty years, pulled him out of bed at daybreak that he might work his fourteen hours a day. Remember that Buffon was rich, and need not have worked. Madame de Sevigne, the greatest writer of letters that ever lived, was a widow at twenty-six and rich. Nearly everybody fell in love with her, but she fell in love with nobody. And she died rather unhappy. George Sand, on the other hand, disturbs our ideas of moral cosmic government, by the fact that she fell in love with nearly everybody, quite regardless of consequences, lived to be old, and died happy, known as “the good lady of Nohant.” The above and more is written to call your attention to a good book that you ought to own, that you and your children ought to read. If we had said at the beginning that it was a good book, you might not have read the rest. Now perhaps you will read. The great thinkers and writers of a nation are the intellectual mountain tops. He who reads a book that reviews earnestly and capably the men that have expressed and created thought through centuries is like one walking on the mountain tops, stepping from peak to peak, and at each step seeing new wonders of the world spread out before him. A reader has asked us to name the best history of French literature. In complying we render a service to many readers who will buy the book or read it in the libraries. There is only ONE good history of French literature written in English. It is the work of Annie Lemp Konta, published by Appletons in New York City—and we advise you to get it and read it. To read a history of French literature—and Mrs. Konta’s is by far the best—is too follow the development of human thought and literary expression, from the childhood of men to the day in which we live, a slightly older childhood. The book that we recommend earnestly will inspire young men with a desire to DO something and to BE something on their own account. In that book you see the babyhood of human thought. You read of the early poems, written shortly after Caesar had forced the Roman tongue upon the Gauls—creating a language that would be like Greek to the modem Frenchman. Your hear of the virtuous girl Eulalie, who refused to serve the devil. And you read of the childishly conceited Charlemagne. When his wife hurt his feelings by saying that the Emperor Hugo was more beautiful, he told the wife that if he found it was not so he would kill her when he came back—and only forgave her Anally because he had so much pleasure on his travels. You read in the famous Chanson de Roland, that every little French boy must study, of the hero cutting the rock in two with his sword. You read in a “ohanson de geste ” still earlier of the Frankish ruler, bragging that he would cut through a horse aud a man in armor with one blow; of Roland, his best Aghter, promising to overthrow the walls of Constantinople with a blast of his horn, and tear out the beard of the Greek Emperor’’; of another of the Paladins, saying that he would turn the river from its course and inundate the capital. Then you see Charlemagne and the rest of them much lightened, when the Emperor Hugo, who had a spy listening, tells hem to make good their bragging or remain prisoners. They have brought Christian relics with them luckily. They j pray very hard to the saints represented by the relics, And every, thing turns out happily. The walls of the city begin to fall, the river begins to run in, and Emperor Hugo sends them back with rich presents. He has had enough of them From this childish beginning of literature you review' the gradual development of the mind of a great people, its philosophers, poets, naturalists, statesmen, down to the rather thin literary pickings of the present day. An intelligent man should know the history of thought and of literature in France, for that French thought has been the mother of thought throughout the world for the last ten centuries. The love of freedom expressed by Thomas Jefferson when he wrote the Declaration of Independence was THE RESULT OF his Reading french authors. Our cutting adrift from England, was the result of the work of French encyclopedist* in the eighteenth oentury, just as much as the French Revolution wu the result of the teachings of those men. In her admirable history of the literature of a great peeple, Mrs. Konta takes her readers from the beginning to the end, frem the forgotten minstrels who sang the early songs of France to the forty immortals," who sit In the French Academy to-day and who ) will be FORGOTTEN SOON, This book is A REAL HISTORY. , he Atlanta Georgian THE HOME RARER “Outside Looking In” lfrTS. New* fcrrW. <§g Amazing Doings in China * b y rev, c. f. aked, ll. d. h HINA continues to surprise us. News has just been received that the Govern ment of a great province In the interior of China has asked an American missionary society to take entire charge of the public school system of a large seetiori* of the country. Shansi is the name of the province. It was here that so many American mis sionaries were murdered during the Boxer rising in 1900. Within the last few' weeks the provincial government has made this amaz ing request of the representatives of the American Hoard of For- . eign Missions. The Government offers to furnish the schoolhouses and to equip them. The Gov ernment guarantees a certain yearly cash subsidy. It guaran tees. as well, full religious liberty. The Rible and the Christian re ligion may be taught in the schools. Such a story seems incredible. It goes far out beyond our dreams. Hut it Is perfectly true. The in formation comes direct from the authorities of the missionary board concerned. • » • The "Memoir© of Id Hung Chang” have recently been pub lished. They have the interest of an absorbing drama. The glamour of romance is over them. Two men in history would have delighted in them. Shakespeare and Robert Browning. The play t>r character, the development of a great mind, its emergence into imperial conditions, and its in fluence in world business would have delighted the soul eiUet of these two supreme students of human nature. The editor of these memoirs is an American newspaper man who was privileged to interview the Chinese statesman and convey to the world his sense of obligation to the Anfierican people. He prints as Introduction to the memoirs a sketch of Id Hung Chang con tributed by another pen. With pardonable hero-worship this writer speaks of Li Hung Chang as ‘‘not onljr the greatest man the Chinese race has pro duced in modern times, hut, in a combination of qualities, the most unique personality of the past century among all the'nations of the world.” • And he proceeds to explain this extraordinary eulogy’. Id Hung Chang was soldier, scholar, statesman and diplomat —and In each capacity one of the world’s masters. “He was distin guished as a man of letters; as a soldier in important campaigns he rendered valuable services to his country; as a statesman for 30 years he maintained a recog nized pre-eminence over his coun trymen in the oldest and most populous nation of the earth; and as a diplomat his achieve ments entitle him to a front rank in the international relations of all history.” • • • The volume is a gold mine of information and of interest. There are hundreds of paragraphs one would love to quote. The editor says truly that among them all nothing is more entertaining than the great man s views concerning and Chriauaiuiy* REV. C. F. AKED. D.D. First of all. while still a young man of 26, haying taken his M. A. degree and at the moment study ing for his LLD., he conceives that it would be “a noble and glorious career, highly pleasing to the sacred gods and his ances tors,'’ to expose the teachings of the “foreign devils” and refute their “sacrilegious utterances.” He is satisfied that the foreign devils come to the country for no good purj?&«n» iie unu tvwy one of the black-robed individ uals is “the paid agent of some foreign Power,” only present in the country to spy upon its Gov ernment! Of the teachings of the "foreign devils” he can not speak in terms of contempt sufficiently' contemp tuous. He understands that It Is a part of their teaching that "the Heavenly Father allowed His Son to come to earth to die for wicked people.” To him this is palpably absurd. He could under stand it if it were said that He died for good people. But “if the gods are good and want men to be good, will they allow mem bers of their families to' be killed like criminals for the sake of criminals?” And he is satisfied that "the crazy fad” will die out! * * * We read on. Twenty-one years later he has become a great gen eral and a great statesman. His mind has been growing all the time. His eyde have opened to a thousand facts. In 1870 he writes: “It can not be said, even by’ my worst foes, that I Lave been a bosom friend to the foreigner, either the man that comes to force his trade upon us or the fel low who would cram his religion down our throats. , , . Yet, in spite of all our dislikes, if we truly have the best interests of China at heart, w© will no longer oppose the coming of the foreigner, whether he be trader, missionary or tourist.” He is ready for toleration: "When last I saw Tseng-kofan we spent several hours in full discus sion of this great problem. . . , Tieng^kofaiu ilk© *ny**U, changed his views exceedingly in the past five or six years, and is no longer a hater of the Chris tians. He told me that it was his intention some of these days to , memorialize the Throne to issue an edict of complete toleration for all foreigners of whatever profes sion or occupation, and I told him that I would gladly join in such a memorial if he would so desire.* His latest recorded views were written in 1886. Whether he ever went beyond the position reached at that time there is no evidence to show. But the ground then ta ken is simply marvelous. He con cludes that there is no feason for hating Christians. Devoted as he is, in mind and spirit, by senti ment and by reason, to the teach ings of Confucius, he is now reads to place Jesus Christ on the same exalted level as that of China’s hero-sage. Ho affirms that in America or Eumne he would be a follower of Jesus, as in China ho follows Confucius. He says that even In Chjna there are thou sands, perhaps millions, of his countrymen who would be the better for Christianity. He de clares that he must never again be thought of as unfriendly to the people of the West, whether they come to China as merchants or missionaries, or whether they do not come at all. And, finally, that it is time China—China from the south to the north—recognizes that some Christians are better than some Taoists and some fol lowers of Buddha! The missionaries who poured tneir blood out for China anti lot Chriit did not die in vain* THE GOOD FIGHT By MALCOLM DOUGLAS. AffNE be the brave, the food fight. L And if I know defeat Still let me not bow down to It. Failure Is only sweet When one, unconquered, breath,, his last In all the battle’s head. hf!NE be the brave, the good fisfit, ’ And if I victor be Let all my laurels bear the crown Of sweet humility; Over my brother's mangled form May they not come to me! The Milk Situation in Atlanta Editor The Georgian: The recent Investigation of At lanta’s milk supply and the re port of the State Chemist and Bacteriologist on their findings should cause every mother In At lanta to take her babe closer to her breast with anxiety and ap prehension and bemoan the fact that she mint continue to feed this same milk to her loved ones Atlanta alone spends thousands of dollars every year for the con trol and eradication of tubercu losis, and at the same time tol erates a condition in her milk supply that is fundamentally tha cause of 10 per cent of the deaths among infants from this disease. Periodical agitations of our milk supply will never give to the people of Atlanta the milk that they should have, and conditions ten years hence will be Identically the same as to-day unless ths fundamentals of dairy economy are observed. What Inducement has the dairy man to produce the right kind of milk? You can not talk sanita tion at the expense of the pock et hook. We all know that the best milk brings the largest returns, but only when accompanied by technical knowledge .of the dairy business. Sanitation means ex pense. The greater the sanitation the greater the expense, hence more of the technical knowledge of dairying Is necessary to war rant the expense. Our dairymen are much-abused men. and they air their abuse freely among themselves at th»ii meetings. There ife not a man put ting milk into Atlanta who is doing more than making a bare living. The people of Atlanta put too much reliance in city ordinances to bring about reform. I do not believe that 6 per cent of the dairymen ahout Atlanta wdlifully and maliciously Intend to produce and sell unclean milk, but they do so as a matter of economy, although false economy It may be They are going to avoid the milk ordinance as much as possible when it affects their bread and butter, or else go on the fence for a time, being ready to fall on the wrong side as soon as an agi tation blows over. The trouble is not with the dai rymen. nor does the solution of our milk condition lie in agitation, and our milk committee is only trying to lead the horse by the tail by this means of reform These milk agitations cause a great ileal of hardship and aval! nothing. The milk inspector Is as wel come on the farm as weeds are In a well-attended garden! !h the dairy sections of the North. East and West the inspector is a welcome guest, and the farmer is a wiser and betler dairyman aft er the inspector's departure, be cause the inspector is a practi cally and technically trained man who can take off his coat and go to it if need be. The inspectors do not go to the farm with "blood in their eyes," and fling laws In the face of the farmer. With the Inspector the law is ap parently incidental, but the farm er is made to feel its Importance In a diplomatic way. The farmer is shown the good of the law ana the purpose of its enactment The government and other large cltte’ are cfireful about the selection of these inspectors. Why shouldn t Atlanta be likewise? The dairymen are full of hatred for the local Inspectors, and they have good reason. They are us ually men of a very uninteresting character; know nothing about practical dairy operations. M hat kind of results can you expect from men of this kind? Whv is there not a creamery in Atlanta? There is. not a city or town above the Mason and Dixon line with one-tentli the population of Atlanta but what has a creamery where good, wholesome dairy products are made. Why is there not a pounh of butter made in A.tlanta? Last venr $32,000,000 went out of the nine States of the South for but ter. $8,000,000 of which went from Georgia. Why couldn’t this mon ey have been kept here? M 1* it that the best milk produce- about Atlanta never reaches toe Atlanta market, except possibly m the hotels for the traveling pun lie? This Is the milk Atlanta needs for the retail trade, but will never get It. There are hundreds of young dairymen turned out of our ag ricultural colleges every' 1' ea . who would be glad to get near this market. They come “ e _ look around, shake their head- and go to locate North, East • West—anywhere but in South. Why Is this so? Don't you know that by s.t - ting out these young da* r! 7 n " vou are shutting nut the only hope that the South has for catching up with the other sections of t country—shutting out the on. solid foundation on which nation ^ a! anrl community prosperity built? Don’t you know that a - lanta tl^irv conditions are kee. ing thousands of people a'' who would otherwise he F lar!