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REWRITING HISTORY

I AM going, said the professor, to rewrite history. Its opinions have been too long unchallenged. Historians have heard such and such stories, and have kept repeating them, without giving the slandered side a chance to say its say.

I have just had a hint. I notice the kaiser insists Germany did not begin the war, Belgium is to blame. Germans are all peaceable, and the German army is the friend of widows and orphans. I also see that the Colorado mine owners are innocent lambs, the victims of wolfish laborers.

It suggests a new viewpoint for history. So I am going to take up that Garden of Eden story and get the serpent's version.

I am going to hear Ahab's and Jezebel's opinion of Elijah. We have never heard anything but the latter's side of the case. It's not a nice way to treat a woman.

Doubtless Mrs. Potiphar's explanation of

her celebrated affair and the gentleman's version of the Lucrece incident would be interesting reading.

That accomplished artist, musician, and poet Nero has too long rested under the opprobrium heaped on him by Roman political antagonists.

And what if it were discovered that Julian, far from being "the Apostate," was merely disgusted with the hair-splittings and wranglings of churchmen and wanted to be a reformer and establish the true religion?

Let us have Richard's own version of the Lancastrian fable of the infants in the tower, and the eighth Henry's plain account of his multiple domestic difficulties.

Philip II. of Spain doubtless gloried upon his deathbed over having impoverished Spain, the Netherlands, and the Indies for the sake of his reward in an iron-bound heaven.

And cannot a word be said for those devoted souls who conducted the Inquisition in their efforts to purge men's minds of evil beliefs?

Let us hear from Charles of England himself, and he may appear a martyr as he goes to the scaffold, and Cromwell may be shown up as a ranting humbug.

Perhaps Charles of Sweden after all was

no swashbuckler, and Catherine of Russia was chaste as ice.

Dickens's judgment has never been questioned. Maybe Squeers was not so much to blame and the boys needed hiding and the diet was the best that could be afforded at Dotheboys Hall. Pecksniff, Chadband, and Uriah Heep also deserve to be heard.

Yes, repeated the professor, I think I shall rewrite history.

It would be interesting to have Judas's own testimony.

I fear moral prejudices have blinded the world.

Friday, December 11, 1914.

CALLING NAMES

THERE is a certain class of arguers who when they wish to crush their opponents resort to calling names.

The epithet is like the aerial bomb dropped on a non-combatant town. It is a malicious attempt to hurt, without gaining any substantial advantage.

Mr. Roosevelt hurls the word "pacifist" at all who oppose his bellicose leanings; if a stronger term is needed he cries "ultra-pacifist."

Mr. Gardner in congress sneers at "Sundayschool" policies.

But that party in the United States who are opposed to the policy of military preparedness are not chicken-livered cowards, moony idealists nor doddering old women.

We-and I am proud to speak as one of them are merely plain, common-sense folk, who refuse to be blinded by custom or to be stampeded by appeals to fear or to race hate.

The policy of military preparedness some desire to force on us is not new. It has been tried pretty consistently some 6,000 years.

It smashed eventually Egypt, Greece, Rome, Spain, and France as world empires.

It is now bearing its logical fruit in Europe, ruining commerce, agriculture, manufacture, and all right human enterprise in a tornado of folly.

When gentlemen therefore urge Uncle Sam to adopt the precise policy that is devastating Europe, he is not a dreamer, but rather shows the hardest kind of hard sense when he says: "I rather guess not!"

We do not want to "change human nature," we want to substitute intelligence for idiocy in the men who do the governing.

We do not believe justice is the product of gunpowder; liberty is not the quotient of a preponderating navy, and honor is not to be determined by duels, individual or national.

All we want is law in place of anarchy. And when each nation settles its own disputes with others by its own arms, that is no more nor less than international anarchy.

Gentlemen come asking for millions to increase our armament, in the same breath admitting the billions already spent have been poured down a rat hole.

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