NOT READY TO DISARM by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Aug 16, 1899

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 25, No. 33.

"NOT READY TO DISARM."

By Editor

SUCH is the display heading in a San Francisco daily (Examiner July 29), of a report of conditions in Europe, based on an interview with Archbishop Ireland, recently returned. Here are a few sentences from the noted Catholic prelate's remarks:—

"We are watched in Europe now with a keen intensity that I have never known before. In many of the countries over there we are still regarded as an experiment.

"The motto of the United States ought to be 'Liberty with authority and authority with liberty.'"

"All the statesmen of Europe prefer arbitration to war.

"I do not believe that the Peace Conference at The Hague will succeed in bringing about any disarmament of Europe. The situation in Europe is so critical that for the present at least disarmament is an impossibility. But the result of an arbitration will be an ultimate disarmament."

"Ultimate?" When? The situation is growing more and more critical all the time. The nations will never disarm till the great battle of Armageddon is in the past.

America's friendliness to Roman Catholicism is thus indicated:—

"It is the universal opinion on the other side of the ocean that the interests of the Roman Catholic Church in the Philippines will be safer and better guarded under an American than under a native government."

And yet the natives are said to be Catholics. This would naturally mean that this government is expected to do more for Catholicism than professed Catholics. Will she?

Rome's Double Working.

It is an undeniable fact that most of the disturbers of the peace in our large cities, whether their cause is just or unjust, are members of the Roman Catholic Church. Many of them have been members of this church for years, and their parents before them have also been members for generations. They may well be considered as the finished work of Roman Catholicism. Their outbursts against law must be laid at her door, the direct result of generations of teaching. Lord Robert Montague, for many years a member of the Roman Catholic Church, tells us that the Catholic Church has her emissaries among the unrestful element, stirring them up to strife. When they thus become so great and wide-spread, the church steps in, controls some local disturbance, and is hailed as the angel of peace by unthinking officials. The "Church" takes occasion at such time to say, "Make me arbiter, restore me to my rightful place, and all these labor troubles will cease."

Here is an instance in point. In the difficulties in Cleveland a conflict took place between riotous strikers and the police in front of the Bohemian Catholic Church. The yells of the mob who were endeavoring to kill two policemen stopped the church services. Priest Purauska, clad in his robes, left the church, passed through the 2,500 angry men to the two policemen, wounded and sore beset. "In the name of the church I defy any man to touch these men," rang out from the priest as he stretched his arms over the shoulders of the officers of the law. The rioters hesitated, advanced, fell back, and the priest led the policemen into the church. Of course that church will be hailed as a benefactor. But if, in the name of the church, that mob, excited, mad-blind and defiant, could be quelled, why in the name of the church were the men not kept from entering mobs. If that church could stay the mad mob at its height, at its climax, why did it not prevent the mob at all? There are other questions of interest here which will suggest themselves.

An editorial in the N. Y. World is authority for the statement that Captain Crozier, of the ordinance department, and one of the American peace delegates to The Hague conference, "has been instructed by the war department to use all possible efforts to secure for this government the right to use luddite, the British army explosive of enormous powers for destruction. The ordinance bureau proposes to secure this explosive or some other of approximate possibilities for the shells to be used in the fall campaign in the Philippines." Can it be possible that the tender, the sympathetic, the self-sacrificing, the loving Christ can be the author of such barbaric cruelty? Never! Then why should we call a government "Christian" that proposes to do such deeds? And how deeply sad it is that the poor heathen have the Lord Jesus Christ so grossly misrepresented to them, by being taught that one of the "greatest Christian nations" comes to them with such instruments of death! Christians, who are Christians indeed, should hasten to them with the true message of the cross.

UNDER date of Chicago, July 11, Mr. D. W. Reavis, secretary of the International Religious Liberty Association, writes: "We have just returned from the International Epworth League Convention at Indianapolis, Ind. All the speakers at that convention were frank in their admissions that there is at the present time a union of Church and State in this country. We were surprised to hear them acknowledge this fact. One speaker at one of the principal meetings called the attention of the congregation to the fact that that meeting was being guarded by the police, and presided over by the governor of the State, that the building was decorated with the American flag and Union Jack, and the choir singing national songs and waving the American flag, and asked the question if these were not indications of the State helping the Church. Great stress throughout the entire convention was placed upon the importance of 'loyalty to the government.' The young people at the present time are being educated that their highest duty is loyalty to the civil law. In fact, according to the speeches, it is more important to obey the civil law than to obey the law of the Lord."

A WORLD revolution is just before us; and men but little realize the scenes that will be enacted then. A strike is in progress in New York and Brooklyn. A few days ago two dynamite bombs were exploded under one of the elevated railway stations. The labor leaders who are superintending the strike denounce the deed and offer to help seek out the perpetrators. But they will be hard to find, no doubt. Strikes and general disorders of that kind furnish the great opportunities for irresponsible and desperate men to do their terrible work. And the fact that the world is so full of that class of men to-day makes the outlook from every human standpoint so very dark. It is only he who looks upon the condition of things to-day through the great telescope of prophecy that can view them calmly. And he can view them calmly only because he sees not alone the evils that overhang the world, but the protection that is offered by the Father in heaven.

THE announcement of a British American syndicate with a capital of $40,000,000, proposing to build more than 2,000 miles of railroads in China, is one among the many evidences that show that the money-power of the various nations is making vast international combines. This means a money empire of the world under the controlling power of a few men. And such is the insatiable greed to corner still more and more millions, that these men seem to be under a spell that keeps them entirely oblivious to the frightful conditions that they are bringing upon the world. Capital is growing more and more grasping, and labor is more and more determined. The local demonstrations here and there all over the world show the spirit of the times, and reveal the fact that the universal break-up cannot be long delayed.

THE New York Sun thinks that it has evidence to show that the labor troubles in Brooklyn are occasioned by some Wall Street brokers, who are trying to affect the market on certain stocks. And thus it will be in these struggles that are before us. It will not only be a conflict in which capital and labor will be arrayed against each other, but capital will be fighting capital, and the laborers in one camp will find themselves aggrieved against the laborers in another; and all together will combine to make the indescribable scenes of strife that have been so fully foretold in the prophecies as characteristic of these last days.

THERE are some who fear that the Alaskan boundary dispute may be the occasion for a serious quarrel between this country and England. Notwithstanding the strong expressions of friendship that have been passing back and forth between the two countries, it takes but a very small matter to start a contention that has all the possibilities of war in it. These are days in which no friendship seems strong enough to subdue the supremacy of self-interests.

DR. OSCAR LOEW, of Washington, D. C., a German bacteriologist in government employ, is said to have discovered a ferment from the bacteria themselves which destroys them. He discovered that microbes after a time secreted a ferment which dissolved them. This is called enzym. It has been known for a long time that bacteria, after a certain period of activity, ceased to act, in which it was said that the disease, like typhoid or scarlet fever, had run its course. Dr. Loew discovered by experimental tests that it was enzym, a bacterial secretion, which destroyed the germs. From experiments it is believed that many diseases may be successfully treated. But this may be, and probably will be, as disappointing as Dr. Koch's discovery.

Two Catholic priests in Boston, on a recent Sunday evening, headed a choir of sixteen voices and two cornetists, and marched through the streets of that city, stopping frequently to make short addresses to the crowd that followed them. They finally reached the Catholic church, where another short address was made from the steps, and the crowd was invited to attend the services that were to follow on the inside. They propose to continue this of Sunday evenings in order, as they say, "to reach the non-church-going masses." You can think about this and see what significance you can see in it.

MORE expansion is in the air. There is trouble in the little dark republic of Santo Domingo. President Heureaux, who was really a czar, has been assassinated, and insurrection is becoming formidable. General Gomez, of Cuba, goes back, it is said, to his native island to fight for rulership. Later despatches say that the United States will interfere and assume a protectorate, and now the European nations are becoming uneasy.

NOT only is Santo Domingo having a social revolution, but the elements have added to the disturbance. On July 28 a disastrous hurricane swept the roadstead and went forty-four miles inland on the island. Three large schooners were wrecked, and only one man of the crews of the vessels was saved. Great damage was done to property both along the shore and inland, but the extent is not yet known.

THE Hon. Charles Emory Smith, L.L. D., Postmaster-General of the United States, says: "The whole country is united now as it has not been since the foundation of the republic." And this is true as regards North and South, but there are great and enormously vital issues on which the nation is dividing, namely, Republicanism and Imperialism, and also the hostile camps of Labor and Capital.

A DESPATCH dated July 31, from Bombay, India, says: "At Poonah, capital of the district of that name in this presidency, there have been fifty-nine cases of plague and fifty-six deaths from that disease in fifty-eight hours. At the cantonment in the city 310 cases of plague and 261 deaths have been reported. Several fresh cases have occurred among the Europeans."

A YOUNG lady, Miss Grace Kafka, on the evening of July 20, after a hard day's work, took from dictation in shorthand and transcribed on her typewriter 1,269 words in thirty-six minutes. In the first five minutes' dictation she took 602 words; in the second five minutes, 667 words. She transcribed the 1,269 words in twenty-six minutes.

GENERAL ULISES HEUREAUX, president of the republic of San Domingo, W. I., was assassinated July 26, by Ramon Caceros. The vice-president, General Weuceslao Figueroa, immediately on the announcement of the president's death, assumed the direction of affairs.

THE spirit of revolt is perplexing the nations of earth. The last we hear is in the hermit nation of Korea. A party of dynamiters, led by a prince of the royal family, endeavored to wreck the residences of the premier and members of the royal household.

NEWS comes to us from Tokyo, Japan, that July 13 a train was wrecked by a cyclone, twenty-four passengers being injured. The coupling links were broken, and a middle section of the train taken out by the tornado, leaving front and rear uninjured.

YELLOW FEVER is raging in the Soldiers' Home at Hampton, Va. July 30 thirty cases were reported, and ten deaths within two days.

A TERRIBLE hurricane swept the coast of Japan, July 8-11. Much property was destroyed and many lives lost.