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I foL 37
EDITORIALS AND SHORT COMMENTS ON THINGS IN GENERAL
% THOS. E. WATSON.
.
It is an extraordinary thing to see the wealthy
Jews in some American cities form an alliance with
the Catholics.
Who drove the Jews out of Spain, barbar¬
ously, causing thousands of them to perish in their
sudden flight across the seas?
The Catholics did it.
Who massacred the Jews in France, accusing
them of poisoning wells, and doing all sorts of im
possible deviltry?
The Catholics did it.
Who tortured them, and tore the teeth from
their mouths, to extract money from their wallets?
The Catholics did it
Who herded them in ghettos, separating them
from other races, and treated them as pariah dogs?
The Catholics did it. *
Who enfranchised them, lifted the racial
barm, opened the courts, the legislatures, and the
highest offices to them?
Tim Protestants did it.
When did any massacre of Jews ever take
place in a Protestant country?
No such thing ever occurred.
It happens in Catholic countries, always :
Greek Catholic Russia, and Roman Catholic
Poland, have the same hatred of the Jew.
Do you I'emember what a ferment was caused
among the Catholics, when a Jew, named Nathan,
was elected Mayor of Rome?
Do you remember how the Catholics threaten
ed to boycott the California Exposition, because
the King of Italy had appointed Mr. Nathan to
represent his country at the Fair?
The Jew who now turns lovingly to the Cath
die, has lots to forget.
It has not been 90 very long ago, since Pope
Pius IX. caused the only son of a rich Jew to be
kidnapped, hidden away in a monastery, and
educated as a Catholic priest.
In vain, were the remonstrances and appeals
o< the Emperor Napoleon III., and others high in
powder: the Pope refused to release the boy.
Of this Mortara case, W. W. Story asks, in his
book, Roba Di Roma “Was there ever & sadder
spectacle than that sorrowing mother, following
from town to town the child which had been rav -
ished from her arms, and , in anguish of heart ,
praying for her maternal rightsf"
Tliis crime was committed by the Pope who
foroed the Vatican Council to adopt the dogma of
papal infallibility; and he it was that brought
Austrian armies upon Italy, to put the bayonet to
Catholic democracy. (He died in 1878.)
W W Story was the son of our great lawyer,
Joseph Story, whom President Madison appointed
Associate Justice of the U. S. Supreme Court.
The younger Story went to Rome, where he
lived many vears, and established his fame as a
sculptor and'scholar. He held a degree from the
University of Oxford, and another from that of
Bologna. The" I will draw the facts,
book from which
as to the detestable manner in which the Popes
themselves have treated the Jews, was written in
1870, before Pius IX., kidnapper of the Mortara
hoy,’had lost his Temporal fact, Power. that authority
Take notice of the my
brings the record dovm to the very end of the
Papal Monarchy: hence, it makes a complete case,
Mr. Story does not go out of his way to attack
the Catholics; at that time it would have been most
imprudent for him to have done so, since he lived
in the Jesuit and Dominican stronghold. He de
Voted his book to a general description of Rome,
ifs historic ruins, its street-life, its markets, its fes
tivals, its fountains Ac.
“The Ghetto”’ is merely the subject of one of
his chapters, just, as Chinatown or Little Italy
would necessarily enter into a book on “Life in
New York.”
After having mentioned the many decrees
which Popes had issued against the Jews, in past
oenturifis, Story comes directly to the reign of
Pius IX., and asks—
“What then is the present condition of the
Jews in Rome? It is shameful, intolerant, and un¬
christian.
“A bann is upon these poor children of Israel
. . . . They are branded with ignominy, oppressed
by taxes, excluded from honorable professions and
trades, and reduced to poverty by laws which be¬
long to barbarous agea
“Shut up* p their Ghetto, and forced to earn they a
miserable liv 'mood by the meanest traffic,
are then scorned as a filthy, dishonest people.
“Forbidden to raise their head, the Church
that has crushed them under its decrees, points at
them the finger of scorn because they creep and
crawl under their burdens.
They are prohibited from holding my civil,
political, or military office, and from the exercise
(Continued B W 5
on
ffl (Mimiiii
1
Price $2.00 Per Year
WHAT CAUSES MEN TO FIGHT.
The League of Nations is not meant to prevent
war: it is meant to suppress democracy.
Nobody but a lnnatic believes that wars can
be forever prevented, but potentates easily per¬
suade themselves that the people can be kept under.
The Holy Alliance of 1815 furnished evidence
6 °“i d do: 16 the } ' 0 P® solutions and , tb e which Kings commenced thought they in
1823 ’ ran on irre &« lar jy until the Pope was de
throned in . Italy, (1«70) and the Bonaparte bas
tard-dynasty expelled from France, in 1871, show
*** !wbattfla People can do, and will do , when those
in P ower become intolerably corrupt and oppres-
31761
T a democracy, authority ... rests those at the
in
bottom > not in those at the top.
In a despotism, authority is usurped by those
at the top, and no liberty of control, or correction,
is allowed to those at the bottom.
The democratic spirit is embodied in the refer¬
ence of all public questions to the people; the
recognition of the rights of the governed to inl¬
tiate .... leg l tion which . they need; the
ls a and
supreme, sovereign prerogative of controlling their
public servants.
' ien “ l03e on top disregard the restrictions
P !ll ' cd upon their official action; and when they
trample upon the vested,time-honored liberties of
tbe people; and when they go ahead, with their
own ar r°gant, self-given dictatorship, proposing
lm ’ te thls Republic with monarchies, despotisms,
7 apalism, and Toryism, throughout, the world, it
is time we heard the word Impeachment.
Nobody believes that such men as Clemenceau,
Lloyd-George, Orlando, and Wilson have any
^ adb j* 1 a P er P e lunl League of Peace.
l hose men know very well that the seeds of
war were sown in human nature when God made
man.
According to the Old lestament, God him
self was a jealous pugnacious God—and I mean
no r 7 ’
“f delighted in . fighters! ,
^ asn asn , f f “iere the ft Devil war in been Heaven? at war with the
Almighty, . he lost the
ever since battle which Mil
* on 30 badly describes in “Paradise Lost?”
" ar general between R°bert Jehovah Toombs and Satan used had to say lasted that 6,000 the
and tbat Satan seemed to be holding his
hand surprisingly , well.
»° h « do 6 s- Took at your daily paper and see
th ® record of the Devil ’s daily doings. It’s awful;
and 301116 irreverent, skeptical people ask, “Why
do «*t God put the Devil out of business?”’
You turn to Paradise Lost,” and you read of
^he wars m Heaven: you read the Iliad,” and you
^ earn h° w the Greeks fought the Trojans for ten
V ea ™, because a Trojan ran away with the wife of
a Greek.
Cyrus made war on Croesus, because Croesus
bad heaped up treasures on earth, too tempting to
a stronger King; and Herodotus says that the rape
of a woman caused the Persian wars which wreck
e d the empire of Xerxes and Darius,
As a historical fact, we know the the long
civd . war which ended the power of the Greek
states was caused by the Bcetian “squatters,” who
bad taken into cultivation some unoccupial land
belonging to one of the temples,
The King of France made a coarse and sorry
j <)ke about the corpulency of William the Con
queror; and the offended Norman went across the
Channel, with an English army at his back, to pun
ish the French people for the insulting taunt of
tbeir Kin d- As you will remember, the Conqueror
lost his life in this expedition because of a saddle
bruise he received, when his horse stumbled amid
the smoking ruins of a French city he had taken,
and & ren over to fire and sword.
Then you can come on down to the Hundred
Years’ War, between England and France; and, if
f A PEACE WHICH PROVOKES war.
After the great Congress of Berlin, following
the struggle, between Russia and Turkey, there was
the usual blare of trumpets, and the British diplo
mats—D’lsraeli and Salisbury—were particularly
proud of their performances which had brought
“Peace with honor.”
Soon afterwards, it became known that
were secret articles to this Treaty of Berlin; and
that the lambs of the Balkans had been left to the
protection of the wolves of Austria.
The pivots on which the whole problem turn
ed, were Bosnia and Herzegovina.
At that time, when the world was praising the
Treaty of Berlin, one obscure editor laid his finger
on the acorn that was to grow into a greater War.
It was Finch, of the Atlanta Constitution; I
Harlem, fia., Friday, May 16, 1919.
yon investigate its beginnings, you will find that a
pious monarch, Louis VII., allowed the monks to
cut. off his long curling hair—when long hair for
men was the fashion—and that his Queen became
30 di^guested with her too monkish husband, that
she ^stowed her love upon a manlier man
Queen Eleanor of France owned the great
provinces of Poitou and Aquitaine; and when she
married Henry Plantaganet, T)uke of Normandy,
he came into possession of those French territories.
Here was the source of wars which lasted 100
years.
Two Italian states, Pisa and Bologna, fell out
about an old well-bitcket: they went to war, and
10,000 men were killed. I don’t know what became
of the bucket.
of .bJ'SS.tisUat*rssss?^ King Louis
XV : the offended lady persuaded
her royal lover to lend military aide to Austria, in
tlie war against Frederick, and the results were,
that, the, French got a tremendous defeat at Itoss
baeh, and finally lost Canada.
The Thirty Years’ War in Germany began
because the Catholics burned two Protestant
churches, and the Protestants Hung two Catholic
councillors out of a high window of the Castle at
Prague.
England and Spain went to war, and battled
with each other for years, because an English
sailor—Jenkins, by name—exhibited in London
one of his ears which the Spaniards had cut off.
when they stopped a British vessel in “the Spanish
Main.”
Jenkins told his talo to all he met, and he
showed his cut-off ear to everybody he talked to,
and the subject took hold of the public ear, and a
wave of popular indignation ran over the coun¬
try, and Parliamentary orators began to make
fiery speeches about Jenkins’ ear, the government ind’his
wac «t length forced to recognize Jefikiiia
ear—and so England and Spain went to war.
I don’t know what became of Jenkins ami his
epochal ear.
It is well known that Louvois, the Premier
of King Louis XIV., plunged France into war
with Germany, because the King had said that two
of the windows in the Palace of Versailles, theu
l>eing bult, varied in size.
Louvois contended that the windows corres
ponded with each other, exactly—whereupon the
King waxed wroth.
His minister, fearing that the King’s displeas¬
ure might lead to his own fall, immediately con
coded plans for another German war, in order
that Louis might forget the dispute about the
windows.
Now, when history presents so many examples
of bloody wars, provoked by trifling matters, what
is the use of pretending to believe that any sort of
combination of established governments will pre¬
vent future wars?
The detestable Kaiser himself claimed that he
had preserved the peace of Europe during the
whole of his reign—aircTthen he set the world afire.
Napoleon III. used to proclaim the doctrine,
that “The Empire means peace?' yet he made war
upon Austria, upon Mexico, upon Russia, and up¬
on Germany.
In short, the same things that men, individual¬
ly, fight about, cause nations to fight..
The makers of the League of Nations are ex
perienced persons: they are not dreaming of Uto¬
pias, Elysian fields, the Golden Age, or the Mil¬
lenium.
Those League-framers are trying so save to
the Privileged few, in each nation, those monopol¬
istic exploitations of the land, of the wealth, of
the annual produce, of political power, and of cler¬
ical domination, which are the curse of Christen¬
dom and of Heathendom.
have no doubt that he is remembered by Sam
Small, and, perhaps, by Clark Howell.
Day after day. Finch wrote about the inevita
ble future war that was to grow out of the arbitra
ry, perverse disposition of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Nobody paid any attention to Finch.
Before /, too, am forgotten, let me forewarn
you that the Treaty of Versailles is a house built
on sand, and carmot endure.
The Sarre region is German; German in
in blood, in custom; it cannot be made
French by written agreement.
Has the lesson of Lorraine been so quickly
forgotten ?
Silesia "" ' tom from Austria by
was Frederick
(continued on page three.)
Issued Weekly
A Kansas friend, writing from Emporia, asks
mo ™ hat * think <>f Socialisin > in its relation to
world - condl tions.
The question is a hard one, and it goes to the
bottom of things: on such a theme one should not
aogmfttl , f
As Ig ° fown the hill, I see many things in a
„ \ , th “ n 1 Used d<>: and 1 less
am »»
t0 COmbat an >’ ^ow-creature, about , his
°P ini0ni ‘
It has always seemed to me that, Socialism, as
6X P°™ ded .„j hy 1 u Hebei , , and , Carl „ , Marx, ,, antagon¬
ized the elemental traits of human nature.
Every normal man wants a home that is his:
he cannot be content in a house that belongs to
society.
In like manner, every normal person wants + o>
Ms ,or ”■*
As to the woman question, the Socialists of
America do not hold the same doctrine laid down
in Bebel’s book ‘‘Woman under Socialism.”
I myself believe in the doctrine of Socrates.
Solon, and Thomas Jefferson, namely— individual ¬
ism.
In many respects, I am a good Jew, so far as
the basic principles of government are concerned:
yet, strange to say. the pioneer Socialists were
Jews.
Like Jefferson, I believe that the less the in
dividual is hampered and bossed hy the govern
ment. the better it is for the country
Let the Individual alone!
Give him a free field and a fair tight for his
,)Wn material advancement.
I No man was ever fully developed by a tutor:
throw the Individual on his own feet, and let him
work out his own salvation.
That’s democracy.
Of course, this may mean the survival of (lie
fittest; the strong man goes on and up, while the
wet* goes down and under.
But. cue Socialism do "yett:,r?
We must take the world as we find it, and
human nature as God made it.
The book of llerr Hebei abolishes God and
religion; but even then we have Humanity to deal
with.
No matter what its origin, it is here, and it
is the same that it was when the wastes of Meso¬
potamia were as thickly populated as the densest
portions of modem China.
To bo quite candid, it seemed to me that both
Christianity and Socialism exposed themselves as
ghastly failures, in the Great War.
I will not argue the question, nor wilt I dwell
upon it.
The religion which cannot prevent the butch¬
ery of (5,000,000 Christians, hy other Christians,
has somehow failed to accomplish its mission, if
that mission meant what the angels sang on the
night that Christ was bom.
And Socialism, as an international force and
brotherhood, went all to pieces, when {he War put
it to the test.
Even in this country, the carpet-knight
Socialists became fire-eaters, and they fiercely join¬
ed in the War-dance which was so suddenly start¬
ed in April, 1917.
Consequently, Socialiem lost ground: it
did not stand the ordeal by fire.
Perhaps, a majority of thinkers believe in
socializing public utilities, applying to railroads
Ac. the same principle that is applied to public
highways, navigable streams, and harbors.
It seems absurd to charter a private railway
which virtually throws into the commercial discard
the Mississippi River, the Potomac, Hudson, and
Ohio.
It seems monstrous that, any private corpora¬
tion should be chartered to tax persons and proper¬
ty, when we know that the power to tax is the
power to destroy.
It seems even more monstrous that the Govern¬
ment should abdicate its functions of creating and
issuing its own money, when wo remember that this
sovereign power has always been a royal preroga¬
tive.
From the days of the remotest. Chaldean
Kings, the royal mints made and issued the nation¬
al currency.
In any extensive collection of coins, you can
see the money of the Assyrians, the Babylonians,
the Persians, the Jews, the Romans, and the
Greeks.
Not until the lax, immoral English King,.
Charles II., was restored to the throne, after
Oliver Cromwell’s death, did the bankers secure
the privilege of coining money.
They managed this through Barbara Villiers,
one of the several concubines of the dissolute
monarch. She was bribed, of course.
Never since that time—the middle 1 of the l7tK
(CONTINUED ON FACT TWO.)
A/o. 3<S.