War Burdens and Public Morals
By Editor
David Lloyd-George, the chancellor of the British exchequer, in introducing the budget in the House of Commons on May 4, made the announcement that a deficit of nearly $27,000,000 would have to be made in the fiscal year of 1914-15, and that an increase of something like $50,000,000 in the income of the government would be necessary. A large part of the income of all the leading governments in these times is sacrificed to the insatiable demands of the war-god. The leading men of the nations are searching diligently for new sources of income in order to meet the increasing demands for war. And yet we are in the blazing light of the twentieth century. But notwithstanding this, the war burdens increase more and more, and they will continue to increase thus until the world reaches the Armageddon war foretold in the sixteenth chapter of Revelation, and in many other scriptures as well. The governor of Oregon issued a proclamation on May 5 ordering a squad of militiamen to close the Milwaukee Tavern at Milwaukee, Oregon. "Under the guise of a club," said Governor West, "a man named Wilbur is maintaining a resort where men and women and young girls congregate, carousing and indulging in debaucheries." Certainly vice-laden dens are getting to be pretty strong affairs when it becomes necessary for the governor of the state to call out soldiers to suppress them. Our brethren in the Asiatic Division have been using the neostyle in preparing their local conference paper; but we are glad to welcome, by the last steamer, a neat little printed sheet under the name Asiatic Division Mission News. It gives cheering reports of the progress of the work in that field. Every advance step taken adds courage to the hearts of the loyal workers who are so earnestly laboring to evangelize the world with the great message of the soon coming of Christ. The Standard Oil Company has notified its employees that from now on, promotion will be confined strictly to those who do not use alcoholic liquors. Most railroad companies have taken similar action. The most intelligent people of this world are waking up to the fact that where high efficiency is required, alcoholics must be eliminated. Why tolerate an evil in the world whose only effect is to produce inefficiency, degeneracy, and crime? The statistics recently given out by Dr. H. K. Carroll, the well-known authority on this subject, show the gain of the Catholic Church since 1900 to have been 5,000,000, or, in other words, their numerical strength in this country has been increased by over one third since the opening of the twentieth century. Despatches tell us that Germany's kaiser has ordered to be inserted in the liturgy of the Lutheran Church a special prayer for military and naval air craft.