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PAGE FOUR THE WEEKLY CALEDONIAN. WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 1919 jJt.obnjsbury CaMonian W. D. PELEY PUBLISHING CO., Inc. St. Johnsbury, Vermont Entered at the 8t. Johnsbury Postoffire as mail matter of the second class TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION One year to any address $1.50 till Months 75 Life's Dreary Path Only a few alien women were in terned. Probably the men prisoners were trouble enough. It's a durned poor man in these days who cannot own some kind of an automobile. We will begin to believe that prices are going down when we can buy cigars once more six for a quarter. Well, anyhow, so far this winter we haven't been called upon to spend half the day shoveling the front walk. The war being over, we can now turn the editorial blue pencil to the household receipe department and conditions in Mexico. A lot of people declare the news from the Peace Table is uninteresting. What were they looking for at a peace conference a fight? Isn't it about time for another sen sational murder in Vermont? Any newspaper office would cheerfully supply a list of perspective victims. The news reports declare that some of our conscientious objectors refuse to be released This may be another cause for some of our penal institutions being looked into. The news from Europe says that Hindenburg is beginning to look tired and care-worn. An exchange sug gests that perhaps the old man misses the vacation he had planned to take in Paris. Many a good Prohibitionist could sue his face for libel and get a ver dict. The measure of a really good wife is how much her husband's pipe buz zes in the bowl without her saying anything about it. Watch a man putting up pictures in a house. He can usually get 'em up as fast as he can get up stovepipe slow, t 1 ' A Ford can do all but one thing; it hasn't yet reached the point of per fection where it will start before the fifteenth turnover these beautifully exhilerating mornings. Doesn't it beat ' the Dutch what a lot of worthless old junk furniture a man and a woman can accumulate around the house after ten or fifteen years of married life? You can have all the new fangled heating systems you want but you'll never get a regular little old home sweet home until you can toast your shins around a coal fire on a zero night in a base-heater parlor stove! The village schoolmaster called in the office yesterday to say he agreed with the newspaper paragrapher who called attention to "the footnotes that will be necessary to make most of Bobby Burns' verse intelligible to fu ture generations." We wouldn't mind paying 12 cents for cigars if we got 12 cent cigars. War stories in the magazines are jetting somewhat skipped over. Better unload your goods, folks. Prices are coming down.- It would be a mighty fine idea to have government ownership of the Hearst papers. We trust that now it is over, some one will not neglect to write a his tory of this war. Some folks won't send in any items because the neighbors might say the paper was improving. One of the satisfactions of peace is the Liberty Bond one has in his strong box. You can tell a camp soldier from one who's been through hell by the way the foimer hangs onto his uni fotm. Maybe the boys who come back from Siberia will have some conver sation with -Fuzzy LaFollette over the sincerity of the Bolsheviki. Somebody remarked tardily that there would have been no howl of protest if Congress had left the country for the Peace Conference. The editors, the lawyers and the lawmakers are now at Montpelier. The preachers and the carrier bovs are still producing fairly readable papers. A lie U always a liability. Think it over. Pep, like muscle, withers when it is not used. Speed is a man's attempt to prevent waste of time. Every one sees Theodore's virtues now that he is dead. It will be one hell of a heaven that the Kuiscr goes to. Perhans the best we can expect is that we'll all be a little less the fool this coming year because of what we have experienced in the year which has gone. Dry Humor Well, we've gone and done it. We've turned Thumbs Down on hard cider and declared our opinion that it s time that those with noses that indicate their owner's faces haven't jellied properly, be removed perma' nently from the landscape . and the public walks. We've taken Temper ance seriously. It isn't the sign of the mollycoddle to be found in a cor ner of the library engrossed m "Ten Nights in a Bar-Room." Some say national ruin stares us in the face. We're now in for Bol shevism as an infringement of per sonal liberty beside which Russia is merely the after-effect of a Sunday School picnic. We're going to have an increase of unemployment due to the shutting down of the breweries. We're going to stagger along toward anarchy under the increased burden of taxation. We won't have any emigrants coming over from Europe to lay our railroad ties or eventually get on the police force because they won t come to a land where the Oil of Exuberation is Taboo and they cannot acquire a beautiful Misrepre sentation eveiy Saturday night and spend Sunday beating up the wife and kids. Nearly a thousand breweries are going out of business and nearly three hundred thousand saloons. There's going to be an alarming in crease in the physically tnwartea whose ailments simply demand Peruna. And the end is not yet. Over all of which we refuse to get excited. We have faith in the Prohibition amendment. Wre believe it is going to work more or less successfully because all of this talk about the Prohibitionists and the Anti-saloon Leagues "slipping one over" on the ountry, is bunk and balderdash. Forty-odd legislatures didn't climb aboard the band-wagon because they were chased there. A thousand statesmen wouldn't have put their official O. K on the measure if over whelming public sentiment back home was against it. , National prohibition has come be cause the country is ready for it. The barber-shop, the cigar-store and smoking-car boys are the barometers in an event of this kind. And anyone with his ear to the ground and an intuition to read human na- ure, knows that with teetotalism and temperance' popular, they're admit ting what they believed in their hearts all along, that hard stuff never did anyone ever good and if persecutions are carried out by the federal government instead of some local sheriff or officer whose wife and seven kids are depending on the corner-saloon politics for his job, they're ready to show themselves in their true colors as sponsors of human decency. It's a queer habit when you stop to think about it; this practice of putting stuff into your face to steal away your money-making brains and rot out your bowels .... just be cause it was popular. It's had it's day. It's got to walk. Being clean and decent now is the popular thing and when you popularize a thing with the American people its success is a foregone conclusion. There isn t an argument in favor of the liquor bsiness that can't be dealt with in the popular manner of dealing with an old hat. We're not in for Bolshevism over an infringe ment of personal liberty when per sonal liberty implies taking a drink any more than we have been in for Bolshevism when we "infringed" per sonal liberty by prohibiting danger ous drugs or saying that a man shall not run his automobile down the crowded business street at seventy three miles an hour. Personal liberty doesn't mean doing anything we please. We're not going to have an increase of unemployment due to shutting down of the breweries. The breweries are not going to shut down There's a score of legitimate products for commercial use that can be manufactured with brewery equip ment. Many of the breweries al ready are changing over. We're not going to stagger along toward per dition under an increased burden of taxation. The poor devil making twelve dollars a week and paying a quarter to a half of it over the bar every week for the stuff that made Milwaukee Infamous, has always bourne this "increased burden of taxation," anyhow. He's been paying the price for the last fifty years. The brewers haven't been contributing to our official revenues out of fundi de rived from a gold mine in the ground. And as for the emigrants tot coming over here because they can't buy Periodical Pandemonium well, if we can't have the class of emigrant who can come over here und be good American citizens by let ting the stuff alone, abiding by our laws and living clean, we can manage to stumble along without them for a few years yet and not necessarily perish in the doing. The American people are good sports. They know this measure and for the good of the country and themselves deep down in their hearts they know it and have always known it. They will, on the whole, abide by the decision their lawmakers have made. Here and there will be viola tions. Two-legged mankind is only human and prone to err. Probably, also, the enemies of Prohibition will make such a noise over the small minority that can't keep within he moral traces that we will be fed on the pabulum that the whole measure is a failure and the sooner we can get back to Bock and Anhauser, the better hyprocrites we will be. But the general effect is bound to be beneficial on the human family in America. It's been proven that there's a certain element that cannot handle the stuff without abusing it. So the "innocent" must suffer with the guilty in the matter of being de nied their eye-opener and night-cap. Well, harder things might happen to us. It might have been Prohibi tion of rare tobacco and fine old Havana cigars! Feeding Germany The Geiman "yellow" streak has taken refuge behind the petticoats of the nation to save the junkers, landed aristocrats and militaristic czars from feeling the pangs of hunger. Let no one be fooled. The frantic appeal wirelessed from the Nauen station to Mrs. Woodrow Wilson and Miss Jane Addams is propaganda of the rankest sort. And all the more con temptible because it stoops to use German womanhood as the buffer to ward off what by mny is considered merited penalty to bestial cruelty. Yes, we are a humanitarian nation. But our first duty is to those who for so long have felt the iron heel of oppression. It is not our desire to be the medium of cruelty nd sav agery. We abhor the thought. And yet down deep in the hearts of many true Americans is the belief that Ger many has not sufficiently paid for her crimes. For no matter how dili gently President Wilson has sought to differentiate between German mil itarism and the German people, the facts remain that if the people ah horred the war, if the people were opposed to slaughter, massacre, rape and rapine, the "vox populi" would have manifested itself in such a way the Kaiser would have been forced to heed it. The fault of the Kaiser was not his crime but his failure. The Ger man people were eager for the war as long as victory crowned their arms. But now that Gott is no longer "mit uns" they whine and stoop to despicably low depths to avoid retri bution. In the name of womanhood they ask that the terms of the -armistice 'be modified. If the allies were not to enforce the demand for 150,000 railroad cars, what good would it do? There is a little food coming from the farms now as winter grinds on. Merely another subterfuge to keep money in the pockets of the bankers and the wealthy. Little they care for their women folk else would they have hesitated at plunging the world into such a holocaust. It was enly yesterdy that we read of German soldiers plundering, rob bing and stealing and outraging the civilian inhabitants of Belgium, and this when they had to thank the len iency of the Allies that they were not annihilated. These are the vul tures that appeal to us for food in the name of their womanhood. Faugh! Prussianism is born and bred in the majority of the German people. The only master they recognize is force. And having violated the laws of justice and humanity, the law of compensation should take its course with them. But humanity will prevail even though we turn in loathing from the supplicants. So let no one say that he will not eat war bread in order to feed the Germans, as many in this place have remarked this week. Our first duty U to the peoples liberated from Prus sian domination. America must feed them. We save for them as we fought for them. The assertion of refusal to remain on a war basis Is a part not becoming to America and Americans. Russians, Poles, French, Belgians, Serbians, Ruman ians, Czechs and other nationalities must be provided with food, else they starve. And then when we have ministered to the deeds of these long Buffering petples, feed Germany with what is left. She can afford to wait for the second course. Out of Date This office receives every week from the Republican National Com mittee at Washington, a lot of free publicity matter calculated to stimu late the prestige of the Republican ?iarty in the next election and squash he Demmicrats. ; It does nothing of the sort. In our office it goes into the waste basket. It is the most childish, out-of-date lot of stuff we believe could be con ceived. From the first line to the last it's a bang and a whang on the pres E CAN BE CUT "I will always wear shoes with Ne!in Solci," writes Mr. M. Newman oi" th: I. Newman Mfg. Co. of Mim.opclir. "They xr? :.uperi.r sol?sin every way, waterproof, more comfortable and nwru durable-. After many inomhi of wear they remain in yood ccnait:u:i." Mr. Newman, and millions of other, have found that the answer to the shoe biil problem li.s in getting soles that wear a long time Neolin SoI. They ere scientifically made, very tough and ye', have the other qualities that soles should have comfort awl absolute waterproofuess. Get NeG'.in sok'd slices for your whole family. They are found nearly everywhere and in all styles. Have worn shoe.-: re paired with Neolin Soles. They are made by The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company, Akron, Ohio, who also make Wingfoot Heels guaranteed to out wear airy other heels. Heolm Sole l .aeit Mark fi. tf. U. 3. Pat. Oft. ent administration and their conduct of the war. It reads as if the fellow who gets it up was one of those chaps whose motto is: "If something ain't wrong, tain't right!" It's a whine and a rail and a wheeze at the whole Demmicratic family and judg ing from his material, the United States is the worst governed country on earth instead of being the best. If the Republican party's campaign funds are going into the manufacture of this sort ef slush, it's time we im proved ourselves by drawing in our purse-strings and turning Demmi crats, "Victory no Bar to Investigate Gross Waste'' is one of the headlines in this week's sheet. "Bernstorff Lauds Work and Views of Colonel House" is another (whether trying to make Col. House out a pro-German or not is not explained). "First of Wilson's Points Has Been Lost!" is a third, and so on, ad infinitum. All of which has William Randolph Hearst skun to a frazzle in the minds of decent, fair-minded Ameri can folks. If the perpetrators of this sort of hogwash think that they're going to carry next year's election by bang ing and slamming and throwing mud at the Demmicrats and their conduct 'of the wa;, they have a beautiful pe riod of disillusionment coming to them. Having voted the Republican ticket ourselves in the past, we here with declare that we are ashamed of such picyune methods for winning a campaign. The Democrats, headed by Wilson, have done a great and commendable- work, regardless of whether they're Demmicrats or Meth odists or Knights of Pythias. The Re publican party in their shoes, would n't have got us a bit better victory. The men in both camps are just hu (rian two-legged men, anyhow, full Of virtues and full of faults. And the pot needn't start in calling the kettle black. We haven't met many Republicans yet who have been es pecially prcud of Chickamauga. If this sort of stuff has the ap proval of the big majority of the Republican party leaders in Washing ton and elsewhere throughout the country, it's a mighty good reason why they shouldn't be given the reins of power to run the greatest corpor ation in the world. The mental cal ibre that would stand for this sort of maneuver isn't exactly competent in our lowly estimation to direct .the affairs of a hundred million people. There are bigger things that need our political attention than abusing the Democrats for what they have n't done. The sentiment of this 'country at the present time is prone to put considerable thought on what the Democrats HAVE done. They land their leader built the organization that licked Germany and for the mo ment we haven't got ingrowing brains to such an extent that we're going to put them in the class with wife beaters and horse-thieves because they've refused to let the boys retain their uniforms or some other mease ley little bit of detail that men with really big brains wouldn't pay any more attention to than a man like Wilson minds what, some little weazoned-up tobacco-spitter who earns seven dol lars a week, thinks of him up.in the brush! We haven't made up our minds which is tougher: to be a mother and lose a boy in France or be a fath er with several little children and lose a wife witli the "flu." Howl, you gol-durned north-wind, howl! You won't howl next August when the band concerts are on even ings on the Common and the peanut-and-popcorn carts are whistling mer rily. The most overworked phrase in the English language is: "When the his tory of this war comes to be written " A lot of ladies are strong for Pro hibition but may be they'll be the ones to bust the good work up wher they see how it leads to their hus bands hanging around the house eve nings. This Merry-thought isn't ori--ginal. It's hard work to dope out which will do th e most damage, Congress with Woodrow over there or the Peace Conference with Woodrow over here. MAKING THE FAR EAST SAFE FOR DEMOCRACY I The Sunset Trail We call it the Far East, but it isn't the far cast at all. That term ori ginated in Europe. For Europe per haps the teim has meaning. To call it the far cast here in America means going three-ouarters around the globe. Which is a waste of effort, words and imagination. For us American folk it shou) be the Near West. You board a Japanese steamer at San Frncisco. You sail away from the Ferry House clock, the low-lying buildings along the dock, the old Panama Exposition fair grounds, out through the Golden Gate and into the heart of the sunset. You while away the hours gazing over the mighty blues of the broad Pacific. The engine sings you to I And thei. the first normal and nat sleep with its heart-throb all the : ural impulse is to write about it. We night. The bells mark off your minic eternity. The swing and the swish of the billows are the only evidences of life in your play infinity. The time passes quickly Some rare morning when the sea air is like wine, the cry comes that one of your fellow- passengers has discerned Fujiyama. When you come up from the saloon ana luncneon that afternoon you are sailing up long Tokio Bay toward Yokohama. You're in Japan. You stand at the door of the Orient. You are in the Far East. And you can't believe it. It is altogether too near home. It comes to you as a shock, how very open is the broad ocean trail straight to the shores of Amer ica Before you took the trip, the great Pacific seemed a mammoth bar rier between your country and the vast mystic Oriental world some where over the skyline into the heart of the sunset. Now you realize that instead of a barrier, the Pacific is a highway that brings you very near to the Orient, indeed. Truly it is the Near West. It seems strange that within the reaches of such a short ocean voyage you should change worlds ; that you could journey in the short course of 15 days from the up- to-date, slap-dash, freshly-painted Ynkee hemisphere into the shoddy, dilapidated, slough-along old Orient where your first chore is to break in three pieces and throw away your American yardstick; where you must unlearn much that has made of you a good hustling Americn; where you must take civilazations as you find them and shorten your stride to their's or wreck your head and your wits and your health in learning the lessons you must learn sooner or later or turn about and return. Just over the western skyline, it is the Near West; Japan, Korea, Siberia, Manchuria, China, the Mal ays, India. Our splendid isolation ex ists no longer. We have taken ship and sailed on a voyage of discov erythe discovery that the world is ominously small, that our country is a very brisht and newly-varnished and puerile country, that the big world, the real world, exists outside of America, that we Yankees have been and are the most provincial peo ple on the face of the globe. And somehow our native land assumes a far different ratio to the balance of the universe. Just a few days of sociability on deck, a few evenings of festivity in the forward saloon, a few days of our country sinking low er and lower on the eastern skyline and the arms of the Pacific opening wider and wider, and we are in a strange, strange civiliztion, among strange, strange people so near and yet so far. We are the "foreigners" out here. Women and old men stare at us. Little child run curiously after us in the streets. We can not make ourselves understood. And all at our own back door. Truly, it is an tlarming situation. The first thought is, what are we going to do about it? The trend of thought in the Near West is so dif ferent than our's; the ethics, ideals, JUST KIDS Somebody Scented Trouble. rzf 7 1 hZJ2XX 1 r1 'M prised 1 t-- I I tome in rtR TELU fl)H I (Mia BEFORE- WE- I 7 THAT HE -HE STEPPED 7 oTirt f7) ON A SWUM K 4 WHAT CHA I n'lEARN - TttA'S C, ,-JSTEBP ON A SKUNK V U' ( PSTTT WJJH A NEW SttT On-DID ) i LA X WET YOU YoUNGL ONES WILL ' Wt'sSSb, ' ': custom-), moral, are all no much at variance; the civilization is so much older anii sadder and wiser and philo sophical; we come to appreciate in deed what Kipling meant when he 1 said that East is East and West is West, and Never the Twain Shall I Meet, And we realize that the fewi MUST meet. Modern invention has j spanned the waves, annihilated dis-1 tance, brought time to naught. Wei muse ineei unu nave numan inter-1 course. We must try and discover th e common viewpoint, the common rendezvous of thought and action. And when those of us who think deeply realize the consequences at tnding on the danger of not getting along with one another, of not un demanding ot missing the common rendezvous of thought and action, panic siezes us. What are we go ing to do about it, indeed? We won- der, want to tell the folks back home still in the paradise of the Splendid Isola tion how far the Near West is from us; how near the Far East is to us. Subconsciously we feel that a know ledge of things as they are will be the panacea of all th e old world's troub- les. If we know the facts, we can I conduct ourselves accordinirlv and wisely. We start in with our writ ing. And then the enormity of the task dawns upon us. The task is en- I ormous because of the difficulty of comparisons. How can we make the folks back home appreciate and un derstand peoples and conditions which they have never seen, judge by standards they have never had to em ploy before, get the viewpoint of peo ples whose civilizations are the exact of our's? Where is the Great Meeting-place. How can we bring our home-folks to it? And yet time is going on and problems multiply. And so, discouraged by the size of the work, we abandon it to the High Foreheads and Academicians. And only a Chosen Few follow the High Foreheads pnd the Academicians. The great mass remains in the darkness of indifference. Both hemispheres suffer from lack of competent press agents. Here is Asia awaiting the hand of the Word-A rtist of the Common Peo ple. Here is the Orient, old, sad, wise, philosophical, a bit helpless, looking with skepticism on the new-born, up start Occident. And here is America, blandly going on Its provincial way, calling out for the great east to stand aside or fall in line, the East and the West strangers. Is there; can there ever be a meeting-ground? It seems impossible. And yet is is not impossible. There is a meeting-ground. Perhaps on its face it is difficult ' for us Americans to understand, more difficult than it is for the Orien tals. Yet it exists and has existed for quite some time in the past. We of the western world are loathe to recognize it or admit it for we are prone to catalog it with the sentimen tal and the maudlin. That is because we are Americans, and new and tin seled and puerile. It goes to prove the contention that the East is East and West is West and the habits, one the exact anthithesis of the other. That corwign wpin"-''.ne is the customs, ethics, trends of thought o" meeting-place of religion. It seems strange to say it. We of the western world may be unable to comprehend it. In failing to understrnd and appreciate we may scoff or lose interest. There is a great No-Man's Land of ePace which both of us can traverse and join bands and live thereafter in harmony and good-fellowship and un derstanding in a world big enough to hold all of us. It is Religion. Religion to us American folks in the great mass is more or less of a hobby. Ad Carter j WHAT CONFIDENCE IT GIVES YOU To have money to your credit at the Wells River Savings Bank. It makes you prepared tor emergencies opportunities. New accounts or are invited. 4 per cent Int. paid VELLS River Savings Bank. WELLS RIVER.VT. PAiigiiiiiiiiiii;i liinniifinniiinniTnp At We do business six days in the week, deadly-erious business. We make money and gain the wherewith al to buy our wives limousenes and send our daughters to Vassar. The seventh day we ride our hobby. That is, if we mix up with Religion as we have it in the main in this country at all. Old Jonathan Smith owns a mill. Sixth days does he labor and mulli grab around in orders and invoices and bills ot exchange and bank-balances and receive delegations from the ppermakers's union and vote the Republican ticket straight because he believes in a high protective tariff. But the seventh is the Lord his God's. In it he does no work, he nor his ox nor his ass nor his man-servant nor his maid-scrvant or the stranger that is within his gates. He goes to church on the Sabbath. He acts as head usher. He sings the hymns in a wierd bass that sounds like a broken bel lows on the loft organ. He meets the Board of Trustees after service and discusses ways and means of making up the pastor's salary or mending the roof over the bck par sonage porch or raising the annual contribution to be sent to the heath en. His daughter leads the choir and sings a weekly solo that gets her name in the little local paper. His wife leds the Ladies' Aid Society. His superintendent teaches a class in the Sunday school. His office boy comes to Junior League in order to walk horn afterward witht he little Jones gul who lives down by the water works and his workmen use the church chiefly as something to be ab sent from, in order to go fishing or monkey with the bowels of the Tin Lizzie. None of them are hypocrites, fcach carries the precepts of the Ser ""Mo into his daily acts and his daily ramifications in jrreat vague, semi-altruistic, typicallylAm encn way Disassociated with the daily routine, a we disassociate Re- XtlnS" J termed a hobby. But in the Orient it is very, very different Religion enters int'eve thing. It comes first. It is the cor nerstone of society-filial relation., the family, the government, business. Which is something the Anglo baxon cannot understand because he has never taken his religion that WaAnin continous two-hour doses. All the same, we can meet on the common ground of religion. It is the one thing which all human-kind takes seriously. It is the Great Fundamental. In the heart of all twn.ln humankind, from superman to Hot tentot, is the great yearning for sat isfaction in the vast mysteries of life, birth, death, occult manifesta tion, me reason for occurancen In h world of nature, the Infinite Power wnicn men call God. Governments may rise and fall, empires may flour ish and pass away, kings may strut across life's stage, great cities hut erect their Babel towers and tomor row the sands of time lie heavily upon them. But the wonder after God and the possibility of life after death where the soul-heart of suffer ing mankind may get the justice which even Nature denies him in this life, goes on and on. This yearning after the Infinite is the heritage of all mankind. Understand a man's reli gion and usually he is your friend far you know him for what he is. It is the golden chain that binds us all to gether in a caste above the brutes We can seep our habits, customs, thoughts, futures together if we fan seep together our religions. Ihjg instrument will do the business where traiffs, treaties, doctrines and Alli ances will fail us because religion is primal, it is more than these. 1 Men wonder at times if it pays to put cold hard dollars into Foign Missions. They go on the assunption that it is simply the extension of a church, a society, a creed They are usually little men of little thoughts and little horizons. They Jo not delve deeply into fundamentals. They assume the end to be gafred, the re sults to be accomplished. mean a cer- (Continued on neat page)