Life — December 12, 1918 — page 8: what you’re looking at

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

THE ONLY KIND OF TEARS THERE'D BE IP THE EX-KAISER WERE TO DIE that man is Mr. Wilson. He has had good success with subordinate devils of various sorts, and is a game man and a resourceful fighter. Does everyone applaud his purpose to go to France on this consecrated errand? No. Plenty of people deprecate his purpose. Many are afraid that he won't succeed, but many others are afraid he will. For the truth is, Society is used to the Devil, and would miss him like everything if he were impounded. Not only the bad’ would be chagrined at the resulting difficulties of sin, but many excellent people would be scandalized at the scrapping of an order which they understood and adorned, and the substitution of one in they would he strangers looking for their places. The Senate grumbles a good deal which about the President's disposition to go abroad. But does the Senate want the Devil bound? Would Boies Penrose haul on the rope that bound him for a thousand years? Not on your life! What good would the remnant of his energies be to Boies with the Devil bound? Would Reed Smoot bind him? Where would Mormondom proceed to if you bound the Devil? Weeks would say: Why do it? ton’s good enough now. And Mr. Lodge! What would the Foreign Relations Committee of the Senate find to do with the Devil bound, and the world cured of war and shooed away from greediness? There would still be foreign relations of a sort, but Bos- of so different a sort that Senator Lodge's learning and experience would be a Zeppelin in a skyful of airplanes. Senator Young-James Wadsworth of New York might think it unsports- manlike to bind the Devil, or he might not, but certainly he Would want par- ticulars about the effect on human life. He is a farmer, and knows what une: pected pests may develop when some other pest that kept them down is de- stroyed. And the The that could he expected of the Colonel in the case of a collision hetween Satan and Woodrow would be strict’ neutrality Possibly he would not be comfortless if it was Woodrow who was bound. One can hear thousands of worthy people saying to themselves: This pro- posal to bind the Devil is radical and Colonel! most unsettling. It may be very bad for busi If it goes through, who knows whose turn will come next? But, gracious! Is anybody going to try it for fun? Travel about in north- ern France and Belgium, or, if you can't, read the papers. This world cannot stand very much of what was done there. If the old order leads to such doings, and to such expenditures, and to such mortalities and cruelties and miseries and miscellaneous abomi- nations and bereavements as the iast four years have seen, the old order must go. Humanity cannot stand these things. Tf Mr. Wilson can think of ways. to bind the Devil, here’s I to him! It needs to be done. ness, E. S. M. To My Soldier HINK of me waiting, as the old house waits— (Door on the jar, the always out, Rooms left unchanged, fires in the cheery grates, same familiar strewn about)— latch The knick-knacks And, like the lamp that never f, at night Its wordless welcome from the porch to burn, Know that my love glows with a con- stant light, 5 Pointing the path till home your footsteps turn! Mazie V. Caruther SOMEWHERE IN HOLLAND