Life — December 3, 1914 — page 23: what you’re looking at

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

“ Peace on Earth: Good Will to Men” HERE is some dispositiv- to ignore Christmas this year. The world is profoundly disturbed. There i. oro- ceeding an experiment in world- conquest, attended with the remon- strances which usually attend experiments of that nature. There is war in every continent; very spirited and general in Europe, sporadic in the other continents. The dead already number hundreds of thousands; battlefields are vast cemeteries, cities that survive the war are great hospitals. Never has the business of destroying life been prosecuted with such energy or with such efficient tools. What the outcome will be no one pretends to foretell, but there is a feeling that, some- how, Christmas has missed its errand on earth, and that it would be in better taste and more suitable not to keep it this year; perhaps not any more at all. This seems so reasonable a feeling that at least it deserves to be examined. One does not find it anywhere asserted that these current proceedings have grown out of the Christmas theory, or are an expression of the idea for which Christmas stands. On the contrary, the chiet instigators of them claim that they stand for something more nec- essary and beneficial io earth than anything that Christmas has ev:r brought or offered. Not good will, they say, will save the world, but force; nor is peace to be desired on earth except for breathing spells in which to prepare for war. War, they tell us, is the cure for human ills. Life is to the strong, and power and space and all goods are to the mighty. It cannot be denied that there is some- thing to be said for this idea. It is not new. It is as old as man. Wars have happened pretty regularly since life started, and this idea has been concerned with all of them. What is novel is the vehemence with which lately it has been adopted by millions of Christmas-keeping people, who have spent for it more lives and effort and treasure than for whole generations have gone fo maintain and spread the Christmas idea. These two ideas are rivals. When the Christmas idea was brought out, the old idea of force and the renovation of mankind by war had been on trial in this world for more thousands of years than any learned person has been able to count. Of the two, it is the Christmas idea that is the novelty. The other is old, old, old. The pyramids stand for it, the cave-dwellers practiced it. It hangs on hard, there’s no denying. It is part of human nature as history knows hu- man nature, and to get it out is like prying life loose from its socket. But, friends, are you pleased with it? Does it look to you like a good or like an evil? You have got to endure it because it still exists, but will you embrace it? Will * you go with it the whole way? Will you assert your power to direct and compel human life? Will you destroy your lunatics, your feeble people, your inconveniently sick, your superfluous children? Force is Odin, and a step beyond is Moloch. What of the path that way? Is it the path for forward-looking people, or is it the back- track? Look about! See this old-new Force idea in action, accelerated and strengthened by every detail of efficiency that has been born to modern thought. Is there still room in the world for it with these modern improve- comicbooks.com