Life — April 7, 1898 — page 4: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

“While there is Life there's Hope.” VOL. XXXL APRIL 7. 1998, No. & 19 West Tainty-First St., New York, Pablisbed every Thursday. $5.00 yearin advance. Postage to foreign countries in the Postal Union, $1.04 @yearextra. Single copies, 10 cents, Rejected contributions will be destroyed un- less accompanied bya stamped and directed envelope The illustrations in Live are copyrighted. and are not to be reproduced without special arrangement with the publishers. HE. Spanish have had the better of the Americans of late in one particular. Alarger proportion ofthem than of our people can- not read, The amount of newspaper reading the Americans have done in the last two months defies computation. Some of this work has been labor well spent, but the bulk of it has been a toil like that which the imagination of the ancients devised for Sisyphus—a rolling ip back. wats up of stones that forever What we have read into our heads in the morning we have read out of them again in the afternoon, What has scemed to be information in the evening bas either turned out next day to be misinforma- tion, or has ceased before morning to be of consequence. That this not been because the majority, or any thing approaching a majority, of Ameri- is true has can newspapers are culpably sensational or “yellow,” but merely be: the demand for news, and the efficiency of the national apparatus for gathering news, has been out of all proportion to the amount of real news to be gathered. ‘The substance being scarce, there has been an unparalleled pursuit of shadows, and arket forall the shadowscaught of excitement n he “ause aready A reasonable amount is welcome to most people, but it overdone. Having sizzled now for two months, most of us are ready to stop and rest. If we have not actually fought and bled, we have thought about it so continually that the effect is much the same, and even if our bodies are not in need of bandages, our distracted minds * LIFE: would unquestionably benefit from a period of repose. Welcome the hope that the excuse for hourly issues of newspapers may presently be abated, and that we may have attention to spare for the ordinary concerns of life. HE report of the Maine Board of Inquiry was foreshadowed before its final publication, and few Americans were either surprised by it or had any doubt as to the truth of its conclusions, It is entirely dispassionate, and the grounds on which its findings are based are so casily verified that fair-minded readers in all countries are likely to ac- cept its verdict that our ship was de- stroyed by a submarine mine, Inasmuch as the Board did not ascertain who was responsible for the explosion, it is nota fighting matter; but it isa matter which gravely affects our relations with Spain, and which places us in the position of a nation which has sustained a momentous injury, for which Spain cannot wholly avoid responsibility. If we from exacting reparation by violent means, our forbearance will at least en- title our reasonable wishes to the utmost indulgence, and possibly it will prove to be an important consideration in the compassing of an agreement whereby, without war, the dreadful distresses of the non-combatant Cubans may be re- lieved, and an end be put to the barbar- ities which have made a hell of what the Creator seemed to have designed to be an Earthly P: . Our sailors will not have dicd for naught if asa result of the sacrifice of their lives two na- tions are kept from war, and a race from extermination, Such a result would be far better than vengeance, and would cause the drowned sailors of the Maine to be held in grateful memory for ge erations to come. abstain ; Tw, (ne a ? y POSstBULITIES of such an issue of our perplexing conditions pre- sent themsclves at this writing. There is still a hope of an arrangement which will satisfy the Administration, and that powerful majority of the American people which supports it. What we want is that Cuba shall cease to stink in the nostrils of civilization. The reason that ie insist that the stench shall stop is that it is under our nose, and is a re. proach to us, before God and the nations of the Earth. We won't fight to annex Cuba. We won't necessarily fight to make Cuba free, unless there is no pos sibility of relieving the Cubans without securing their independence. To pro. cure their liberty is not our job, but to prevent them from being exterminated has come to be regarded as our duty, and weare ready for so much of inter vention as is necessary for the accom- plishment of it. Wholesale atrocities, involving hundreds of thousands of deaths by starvation within a night's sail of American ports, don't go. That is the attitude of the President, and of an overwhelming majority of the people of this country. There will be no war of ambition or annexation; no war of vengeance, Spain will reap what she hus sown, irrespective of any action of ours. Let us hope there will be no war at all. But there must be no more atrocities, no more wholesale starving of women and babi no more shooting of little boys in the back. Our Uncle Sam has said that that must stop, and his word is good. He is tired of being compelled to burn pastilles in Florida whenever the wind is from the south, ID anyone say Klondike? How completely that region has passed for the moment out of the sphere of dis. cussion, The Klondike son is at hand. Work on Yukon River boats is being hurried. Travel already strongly towards the Northwest, but it is alla side interest, and reports of lucky finds that would have made sensations are printed in out-of-the-way corners of the newspapers in minute type. Gold is gold, but it is not always and all the time the first interest in life. Besides, there is anew way of finding money. To sell something to the government at famine prices is the latest road to riches, and there are sure to be many who will try to travel it. No cry for war is more shrill than that of the patriot for plun- der’s sake, sets