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About The Conservative (Nebraska City, Neb.) 1898-1902 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 27, 1898)
2 tlbe Conservative. disciplined in these great nationnl insti tutions until their pupils arc perfectly prepared to enter upon those vast inter national corpse-making matches , called battles , anywhere on earth. Such splendid machinery has modern civiliz ation and Christianity invented for the wholesale destruction of humanity when the opposing armies of two re fined and pious peoples meet in conflict that physical courage has become almost a part of the mechanism of that mag nificent murder which we call war. And now the need is for men who have that sort of intellectual and moral bravery that will make them bold enough to tell the truth , to advocate the truth , and if need bo , to politically die for the truth. The schools , colleges and universities of this Republic should teach their stu dents the importance of thinking instead of depending upon what others have thought. Individuality and the strength and self-reliance of an enlightened independ ence in thought and speech are sadly lacking in the public life of the United States. Men who dare to denounce wrong , in the face of a mad populace who for the moment approve and support the wrong , are needed , and needed now. The old fallacy that "a majority is always right" was exploded on Calvary , at Jerusalem , more than eighteen cen turies ago ! It takes from ten AN AMERICAN to twenty generations ItllEED OF MEN. tions o f careful coupling of the best types of domestic animals to found and establish a breed. The owners of cattle , swine , sheep and horses in the United States thoroughly understand and perfectly appreciate the law of heredity. They therefore select the best individuals from each race so that the more valuable traits may be intensi fied by transmission. The result of all this study and care in breeding the domestic animals of the United States is strikingly satisfactorj * . The American standard-bred trotting horse has no equal on the globe. He is the result of transmitted qualities of en durance , gait , form and celerity of the movement of the limbs , in such combi- nation and porportion , as to produce speed. The continued lowering of the mile record from three minutes shows that the shortest time in which a mile may be trotted has not yet been re corded. The Short Horn , Herefordshire , Polled Angus , Jersey , Swiss and Holstein cat tle herds of the United States contend triumphantly with their Icin for superi ority in all the markets of the world. And many specimens of each have been bought in the United States for exporta tion with the intention of improving Eu ropean stock. In. sheep and in swine the American farmers have shown equal intelligence as to breeding , for the most desirable and useful purposes , so that today the farm animals of the United Stales are equal to those of England or any of the continental countries of the old world. How long , in view of the foregoing , may it possibly be , before there will exist a human be- HOW LONG BEFORE fa R who , g AMERICAN MIS. ( lis t in c ti ve 1 y American ? The breeds of Englishmen and Germans are well defined. Even the casual observer can distinguish one from the other on sight. And the children of English parents are altogether unlike the children of German or French par ents. The racial characteristics of each nation in Europe are inscribed upon its physical and intellectual organism. Here in the United States however there is since the landing of the Pilgrims in 1620 , only a lapse of two hundred and seventy-eight years. And reckon ing thirty-three years as a generation less than nine generations of Americans have been born into the United States from the small original stock of the Pil grims in New England , the Swedes in Delaware , the Quakers in Pennsylvania , the Dutch in New York and the English in Virginia and the Caroliuas , though the first attempt at colonization in the latter was hi 1585-87 by Sir Walter Raleigh ; and in Virginia by the Captain John Smith colony in 1606. And each year there has been , since the present century began , a steady in flux of foreign blood to commingle with the native. It seems possible that , in the wisdom of an Omniscient Mentality , this country was reserved for the pur pose of breeding a new race of hu manity. Hither have come individuals , male and female , from every part of the globe , civilized and uncivilized , repre senting all the tribes and breeds of man kind. Under new conditions of climate , soil and environments they have hero renewed the struggle for existence. Here with better average nutrition , less of the asperities of life and with con stantly cumulating comforts this vast conglomeration of humanity has been amalgamating race with race and typo with type. But not yet , seemingly , has there been evolved a markedly distinc tive American breed of men. Sir Francis Galton in his "Inquiries into Human Faculty and its Develop ment" a work of great research and candor , published in 1888 philosophi cally remarks : "The tyrannies under which men have lived , whether under rude barbarian chiefs , under the great despotisms of half-civilized oriental countries , or under some of the more polished but little less severe govern ments of modern days , must have had a frightful influence in eliminating inde pendence of character from the human race. Think of Austria , of Naples , and even of France under the third Napoleon leon ! It was stated , in thaLondon.Daily News of October 17,1870 , that according to papers found at the Tuileries 26,642 persons had been arrested in Franco for political offences since December , 1851 , and that 14,118 had been transported , exiled or imprisoned. " Galton holds that under long contin ued conditions of suppression blind in stincts of fear have been ingrained into our breed so that they bar us from the enjoyment of the freedom which the forms of modern civilization are capable of giving us. "A nation need not , " says Galton , "bo a mob of slaves , clinging to one another through fear , and for the most part incapable of self-government , and begging to be led ; but it might consist of vigorous , self-reliant men , knit to one another by innumerable ties into a strong , lonso , and elastic organization. "Tho character of the corporate action of a nation in which each man judges for himself , might bo expected to pos sess statistical constancy. It would be the expression of the dominant charac ter of a largo number of separate mem bers of the same race , and ought there fore to be remarkably uniform. Fickle ness of national character is principally due to the several members of the na tion exercising no independent judg ment , but allowing themselves to be led hither and thither by the successive journalists , orators and sentamoutalists who happen for the time to havethe , chance of directing them. " The ideal standard of a republic seems hardly attainable by the present breed of Americans. A republic wherein each citizen shall soberly think upon all public questions and make his ballot the reflex of his candor , judg ment and patriotism may bo far distant in the future. But until the slavery of the masses to leadership and partyism has been abolished and their mental emancipation established how can a safe and solid republic be hoped for even by the most confirmed optimist ? The taint of the primitive barbarism of all the peoples of Europe , and the tendency to follow head-men , chiefs , leaders and plotters must be bred out of Americans before they can transmit to their descendants a common or general inherent capability "to rise to the posi tion of free members of an intelligent society. " Self-reliance , non-gregariousness are individual qualities which in a proper civilization should speedily assert them selves. In the original colonies and in states founded by and maintained by immigrants these characteristics most abound ; for the reason that the depend ent , the gregarious and the easily led members of an established society never quit it to take upon themselves the rigorous duties of trying to found a new one. Such individuals are too servile in soul and body , in thought and action , to even think of self-reliance sufficient to