IT IS DANGEROUS by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Mar 13, 1901

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 27, No. 11.

IT IS DANGEROUS.

By Editor

If Mrs. Nation’s raid were but the righteous indignation of feeling wives and mothers over the murderous work of the saloons and the pitiable weakness and criminality of the officers of the law, from the view-point of common justice she should be borne with. But it takes a more dangerous form, even, than that of fanaticism, a species of religious insanity. She seems to imagine that she is called of God to her work, and that for whatever she does God is responsible. She uses language of herself in addressing the saloonists which indicates that this is the case. For instance, here is a portion of a letter addressed to the joint-keepers of Topeka, as given in the New Voice of February 7:—

“My Dear Hell-bound Sinners: . . . Your master, the devil, has you under his thumb, and you poor scullions do just what he wants you to do, and he makes you believe that there is no escape. Don’t believe him. Listen to me, your friend. Get out of these hell holes quick and I will help you stay out. I came to rescue you as well as those you are murdering. Do not delay, for he that being often reproved hardeneth his neck shall suddenly be destroyed and that without remedy. . . . Should you do as I request you will be safe and happy; otherwise you shall utterly perish. For if any man fall on this stone he shall be broken, but if this stone fall on him it will grind him to powder. “Affectionately, MRS. CARRIE NATION.”

This is the language of one deceived.

To those who rent buildings to the saloon-keepers, she says:—

“You have entered into a partnership with the keepers of these murder shops, and our indignation will be alike against the shelterer of these criminal factors as against the bar fixtures and the liquid damnation. If we find unbarred doors, we may spare them; otherwise we will annihilate all opposition.”

One of her followers thus speaks of her attack on one who struck Mrs. Nation:—

“When I saw this brutal man, who had taken the oath of office to enforce the law, step in between Mother Nation and the murder-mill she was attacking, and fell a blow on the head of a woman who carries the ark of God in her soul, it was more than I could endure. I was righteously indignant, so I lifted my stick and smote him four good strokes over the head and shoulders.”

Another says: “In His name we were led to make the raid with our Joan of Arc, Mrs. Carrie Nation, to lead.”

Another thus writes: “Having in a vision seen this monster evil vanish before the W. C. T. U., I took courage and put my shoulder the harder to the wheel.”

All this will be short-lived. The violent burning of such a spirit soon consumes the zeal or throws its devotee into the insane asylum. It is the dangerous spirit of the old crusades to rescue the “Holy Land” from the hated Moslem; but hundreds perished in the Crusades, Christianity became a hated thing among the heathen, and the Moslem still rules in Palestine. The Crusades were not Christian; neither is Mrs. Nation’s raid.

By the above we do not mean to say that the saloon ought not to be suppressed. It ought to be everywhere, doubly so in Kansas. In most States the majority of voters divide with the liquor-seller the responsibility; in Kansas the saloon is an outlaw.