Civilization, Literature, and War
By William Henry Smith
It is said that juries in Arizona have been and are very slow to convict a person accused of murder, but yet that there has been a great decrease in the proportion of homicides to the population. This is thought to be due to the fact that as the country becomes settled, the custom of carrying a "gun" is dropped. In outlying districts, where it still prevails, homicides are much more numerous proportionally. Perhaps if real civilization could once get into the saddle and take the reins of government in the Old World and the New, a similar decrease in the preparations for international murder would come, and have a similar effect. W. H. S. WE are continually reading of remarkable instances of conversion resulting from the reading of a scrap of literature picked up by accident. There is danger that we will take this as evidence that the work will go whether we help or not. It will; but we must be in it, if we are true to our colors, and share the final reward. Such incidents serving to show the power of the printed message, should only make us more zealous in circulating it. Coupled with personal influence, it can always accomplish more. WRITING from the front, amid the strain and horror of the field hospital work, a nurse says, "If there ever is another war after this massacre, then the whole human race should be blown to pieces, and completely wiped out of existence." There is some reason to think that there will be more wars, and the last of them will end in a way much like annihilation of the race,—in the blotting out of the participants at the coming of Christ. W. H. S.