Manias by Editor | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Dec 3, 1912

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 39, No. 47.

Manias

By Editor

The "Christian Statesman" for October refers to the action of the Japanese government in summoning a conference of the representatives of Shintoism, Buddhism, and Christianity, and the resolution passed at this conference expresses the thought that it is the purpose of the government to enlist the coöperation of these bodies to uphold the government and religion and education, each in its own sphere, and guarding and maintaining the prosperity of the imperial throne, "the adherents of each religion to practise their own doctrines, and guarding and maintaining the prosperity of the imperial throne to elevate the morality of the nation." The Christian Statesman thinks that this is interesting, significant, and in a measure at least encouraging, but it declares, "It is to be hoped, however, that the Christian church in Japan will not enter into any entangling or compromising relations with other religious bodies." We wish that the Christian Statesman would hold to that. It certainly would never advocate a union of church and state, and welcome Catholics to that union around the Sunday question, a purely church dogma.

Manias.

One of the tendencies of the modern age is the various species of insanity that seem to possess classes of people. Take, for instance, Wall Street. It is a great big gambling concern commercially. Everybody knows it, but the very passion of gambling is there, so that outside of hours, one writer states, almost any sum, from $10 to $50,000, may be risked on almost any proposition any day in Wall Street. Elections, football games, polo matches, chess games, and things that would not be thought of at all, are taken as risks. Sometimes this mania for gambling is carried on in secret, where the public can not view it at any price, and where it is forbidden by the statutes. Fighting cocks are brought in, and dog fights are carried on, in order to feed the mania for gambling. The same thing is shown in aviating and motoring. Men run all sorts of foolhardy risks, without counting results. If one should do the same thing in the cause of religion and humanity, he would be considered a monomaniac; but what shall we call these constant exhibitions which are going on?

The "Journal of the American Medical Association" declares that "charges have been made by competent and unbiased observers that the federal meat inspection laws are administered in the interests of the packers, rather than for the protection of the public, and that meat that would be accepted at the ports of entry in Europe is passed by the federal meat inspectors for home consumption." And the same things are vouched for elsewhere. The simple fact of it is, nobody needs meat. Those who let it alone have no trouble with the inspectors.

At last the French and the Spanish have agreed upon the partition of Morocco, and by these negotiations, which have been carried on for some months, there is secured from Spain an extent of territory that is greater than what was accorded to her by the secret treaty of 1904. France was obliged to cede to Germany a large area of her Kongo possessions, in order to placate Germany’s feeling over the French protectorate in Morocco. Spain cedes to France nearly 200,000 square kilometers in the Ifni regions south of Agadir, and the town of Tangier, in a zone of 15 to 16 kilometers around it, will be international territory, because Great Britain did not wish the opposite side of the Strait of Gibraltar to pass into the hands of any single European power.

One large weekly newspaper says there is plenty in the land. "Granaries are full, barns are bursting, cattle and swine are fat, there is money in the banks, commerce domestic and foreign is active, labor is well employed, and in many cases well paid." But the same article also tells us there is injustice in the land. And this is certainly true. There are many who are not receiving the good wages. While great granaries and storehouses may be filled, there are many empty cupboards and flour bins. There are some classes among the best in the land who always feel the pinch of poverty. One of the great difficulties is that the wealth is held largely by the comparative few, and there are comparatively many who suffer.

Infantile Paralysis and the Stable-Fly.

The "Journal of the American Medical Association" of November 2 indicates that infantile paralysis is transmitted through the agency of the biting stable-fly. At least men have been able to transmit the disease from monkey to monkey through that channel. The lesson of all this is that every breeding-place of flies should be eliminated.