LIFE'S FITFUL FEVER. ODD SYMPTOMS.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVI, Issue 122, 21 November 1908, Page 9

LIFE'S FITFUL FEVER. ODD SYMPTOMS.

(By Dr. P. H. Charity.) The days of war, happily, are nearly Sane, except on the colonial frontiers of those nations which transplant a little •f their old stock. A littles blood, mostly shed by black, brewn, red, or yellow tne_, has long been believed to be an excellent fertiliser for the young slips frem the old stem. But among the white men the war has been displaced by the rumour «f war ; the light comedy has inevitably replaced tke heavy tragedy. Battles are fought witk blue becks instead of blue metal or •ther 'deadly missiles. This is the age of the large scale for murderous instruments, but the small scale for public murder among the farm-houses and the cornfields. Millions are daily slain on paper, but the same millions live for another blue-book and white-book battle. More power t« the blue books and to the white books. \ A few days ago the London Times said ponderously, though the editor was probably smiling lightly at tk« tme : — "Germany and France must feel relieved that the awfui possibilities threatened by the Casablanca controversy have been averted. If war had been forced on France it must inevitably have involved other countries, including Britain." Tke Times knew, and everybody knew, that there was no danger of war. The rumpus was merely a comic turn i« the European vaudeville concert. Casablanca was all tha time Casablanka, except for the unlortuaate Mcora wh» have keeome strangers, aliens, in their own land. Th« Moors and Msroeco are mere circumstances^ adventitious aids for the expansion of the white man's trade. Destiny (which is European diplomacy) "moves them up and down, and mates and slays" for tho greater glory and profit of tke wkite traders. Wars among the white men are not bo numerous now because "'the man behind" is not the same man as once pulled the strings of the mechanical t«y of war. Long ago "the man behind" was the king who plunged his people into seas of blood because am enemy had talked lightly about a pimple on the^ Roya! nose. Later on the King-in-Uouncil, which means the ruling political party of the day, became "the man behind," and is so to-day. {While the Asquiths and the Bulows and tke "wh» ises" and tke -"who aints" are congratulating one another about emergencies from crises, some of the pawns in the great gama of State chess, the "feed f»r powder," are pawning •way at tke "uxeleV far bread. In a few decades "the man behind" will not be the Prime Minister of England or Germany's Chancellor. " The man behind" will simply be the man who has always been behind, and will have tqo much common-sense to go out and slay his brothers on a sunny morning. Money has always been called "the sinews of war," but the real sinews have generally been in sturdy arms, moved by men who have hardly known what the war was about. "Not far us to reason why" has been the soldier's creed through the ages. How Hiany of tke men who went cheerfully to Sontk Africa and stayed there, in a grave, knew -wh«m tkey were bemefiting by tkeir death? There is raent for all in this v-ide, jwide world, and tkis fact will be peacefully recognised, not by deereis of tVe Hague Co_ferenee, but by the deAjlopnent »f common-sense. If the Par'iansenta of the world agreed that soldiers and their officers should wear sensible civilian clothes, with only a modest badge to imdicate the profession of arms, the grave «f war vauld be mere th^n half dug. When. 99 p«r cent, of tho people- hay» oorxmaitxense: the millennium will arrive automatically". Any man who has an endowment of ec-mmon-sense now kas the _tillen*ium already established for fainsclf. Perhaps th» greatest relief which candidates will experience after the elections will »• tha reeor«ry of tkeir reputations, and tke better they ar« defeated tho happier tkey should be. Some of tha wooers havo been spending half iheir tint* ixoref uting allegations, but after ihe seeend ballet is decided next week they will all be mostly washed at wkit* as snow. "It is kad enough," says on» man, "t» have ene peal skeleton in on*' a cupboard, kui theso people (th» allegataro) And a whole grave-yard there. I had a skeleton about tho size of a rat, but I am confronted with legions of skeletons, and the smallest of them is as big as a horse." A typical protestation, which a bishop might be compelled to make if ever h* desired to ornament thefloor of Parliament with his gaitered legs, might take' this shape : "It is not true that I ordered a curate to stand on his head for six weeks just because I had caught him winking, at the picture of a girl on a theatrical notice-board. It is baso to suggest that I was married in South Africa and deserted my T^ife fchore. I waa never within a thousand miles of South Africa. I have the uttermost contempt for the man who spread _ report that I have four long beers for breakfast on week-days, and six on Sundays. It is not true that lam being run by the single-taxers or that I secretly signed the platform of th« tote Darty in order to capture tho horsey vetes." Mr. Massey, holding up to scorn tho dolea men, the promisers of roads and bridges and dairy schools, practically says that the scheme of politics has do generated into "doletics" or "dollartics," and politicians into "doletieians" or "dollarticians." The number of words that xhyme with politics as reasonably as heaven rhymes with given (even classic, poets have committed that sin) is verylarge. There are follitics, hollertics, hollowties, jollities, lollietics, wollitics, and Borne others. One commentator suggests that the word politics should always be spelled with a capital P and two 3's, because it is mostly a game of parrot cries, nnd the politicians have bec«m* but "poor Polls.' Oa.ce men groaned because they were act allowed to vote for their alleged »pr«s«ntatives, and now they almost m«an because they are expected to vote. And tkat is kuman nature. Tke baby that cried for tke soap, and declared, more or less inarticulately, that it would not kb happy till it got the soap, probably found tkat it had no good use for tk» soap irheß the article was •»- tur»d. Therefore candidates, in a, country ttwa, anticipating that -people will be too languid t« vote on Tuesday, are •bartering motor-cara to take them to the booths in all the pomp that cushions and petrol can create. If the electors' indifference progresses at tho present rat« (thirty, forty, and fifty per cent, conatitute the ranks of the tired), there will be about one voter in a hundred years' time, and he will be housed in a gild*d palace and people vnh make long pilgrimages to sec him. But perhaps he .will be a mummy. I