The courier. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1894-1903, March 17, 1900, Image 1
K. y 7 -c VOL. XV.. fO. XI ESTABLIbHF.D IN lS,cti PKICE FUECRNTS LINCOLN. NF.BR.. SATURDAY. MARCH IT 1900. BHTSKKDIN THE POSTOFFICE AT LINCOLN A3 . ..., SECOND CLASS MATTER. THE COURIER, ' " Official Organ of the Nebraska State Federation of Women's Clubs. PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BT THE COURIER PRINTING AND PUBLISHING GO "" "Qffice 1132 N street, Up Staire. " "Telephone 384. SARAH B. HARRIS. Editor Subscription Katep In Advance. Per annum $1 00 Six months " 75 Three months 50 One month 20 Single copies 05 The Courier will not be responsible for vol untary communications unless accompanied by return postage. Communications, to receive attention, must be surned by tne full name of the writer, not merely as a guarantee of good faith, but for publication if advisable. : 'W0&i' OBSERVATIONS. 8 Rudyard Kipling. Judging from, the reviews and the newspapers, Rudyard Kipling is nut the man he was. His books sell just as well, but the critics, less and lesser, profess entire disenchantment. It is said that the English army in india officers and men object to his reports of their conduct and character. Truly, according to Kipling the Brit ish in India are a bad lot: the otlicers, carousing, conceited faithless roues, the men no better than thieves, when not dead drunk and the wives of offc ers, men and civilians thoroughly untrustworthy and irresponsible. The English schoolmasters and the alumni of the secondary schools at Eton, Harrow, Rugby, and the mili tary schools deny that the scholars are the disagreeable, brutal prigs of Stalky & Co. Even the beasts ol the jungle are holding meetings and have drawn up resolutions repudiating Kipling's portraits of them and dis tinctly asserting that this man Kip ling is unauthorized. The Gloucester fishermen were the first to detect the fishy tlavor of tie story he wrote about the tishing-fleet off the hanks. The naturalists of the Indian jung'es are quite willing to accept Kipling as a romantic authority on the British army, the soldiers are willing to believe what he says about the English schools, the Yankee skip pers, and the animals in the jungle but they disavow his authority and ability to sketch them. As he is not a so'dier's soldier, or a sailor's sailor, and as the school-boys whose grown up name is alumni, and the school teachers are huffy because of the very b'ack eye he has given the English schools, and further as the English poets have always refused their con sent to h s reputation as a poet, the testimony is conclusive that he is not an universal genius. His stories are like post mortems. They dis cover diseases that intimates had never suspected and other individuals of the types he portrays protest that he is unjust and und scriminating. But the stories are interesting if not true and the sale "f Kipling stories will not be injured by the wholesale repudiation of Kipling by tve soldier as the novelist of the British army, by all women as their dramatist, by the naturalist as a student of ani ma's, by school-boys as their his torian and uy the Gloucester fisher men as a writer on ships and sailors. The Gloucester fishermen were the fi-st to laugh at Kiplfng's sttiries of fishirrgoff the Banks. 'They were not affected by his reputation as a writer. They do not pretend to any knowledge but that of fishing, and literary standards and reputations mean nothing to them. Such a revision of a man's reputa tion is unusual during his life. For the continuity of Mr. Kipling's fame, it is perhaps as we I that he should be re-rated while he is still producing. Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico either belongs to the United States or it does not. If it is our it is a great scandal that must injure the republican party, to defend ourselves against its trade, to apply to its trade with other nations our prohibitive system and then to turn it against the Puerto Ricans them selves. No commerce is strong enough to stand the application of such a hateful principle It is said that the Sugar Trust has been able to convince congressmen of the wis dom of delay. It is very unfortunate for the country thac a few men are able to put such a shame upon it. Expansion. Colonization or expansion is the test of a nation's virility. It is a stage of growth and a sign of it. No great nation has ever existed that has not grown to its political bound aries and beyond them. It may be that this experiment In democracy will not succeed. If not we shall fail in the Filipines. Like the gold seek ers who printed "Black Hills or bust" on their wagons in the seventies. It is colonization with us now or admit the most indisputable sign of na tional weakness and prophesy of dis integration. What has happened will happen again und history is the most reliable s.byl or oracle that we can consult. England is colon zing the world. We are sib to her and have inherited the capacity to colon ize; a curious national tact which the Latin and Romance nations do not poshes. Universal peace is more likely to be accomplished through this persstent English habit than through an international p-iwwow and agreement. England in British America, Australia. Nova Scotia, In dia, and the smaller Islands is as loyal to Great Britain as the English in England. "When America and Eng land shall have colonics enough there can be no more fighting. The government of the United Stafcjs is just finding out that colo nizttion or expansion is incompatible with a high protective tariff. Colo nization is a settlement of a people in a new country, while retaining the institutions and laws of and allegi ance to the mother country. Expan sion, in the American sense, is adop tior, and the imposition of our laws, institutions, customs and conventions upon an alien people separated by water, or another nation from our boundaries. It was expansion, for this last reason, according to the anti expansionists when we bought Alas ka, and it was not expansion when we gathered in Louisiana, Florida and the Northwest Territory. With a part of the United States in the Fili pines and another part of it in the Atlantic between North and South America the difficulty of maintain ing a protective tariff will become ap parent, if not to everybody, of neces sity to congress when it attempts to reconcile the rights of the people on the islands with our protective sys tem. A Christian Newspaper. Doctor Sheldon's strictly censored newspaper containing only the cur rent events that he thinks Christ would want people to have printed is the financial success of the week. "Whether such a paper would retam its circulation for a year or more this experiment of a week cannot fairly determine. Those who believe that the New Testament is a faithful and unexag garated report of the life and teach ing of Christ cannot deny that Doc tor Sheldon has authority for claim ing to know exactly how Christ would run a newspaper in His year 1900. Chr st taught the disciples that His life, more than anything else was an example. Everything expect the rule of love and its unrestricted ap plication, was taught "by them of old time." But the Jews then and we of today learn by concrete examples. The ten commandments do not mean anything to us until one of the sins it forbids tempts us, or we see some one else breaking them. Perhaps the Jews of that time were a trifle harder to teach by precept then, than we are now. Their language was that of a very primitive people. It was all in parables and figures. Worship of a spirit, had degenerated into the wear ing of phylacteries and amulets, into a very formal and complicated cer emonial. Yet they were an emotion al, easily moved people, as the quick acceptance of Christ's radical and revolutionary doctrine demonstrated. Nevertheless there is not one of us who is willing to take Doctor Shel don's prescription ot news. There areallsTtsof things in the Bible. Under another name some library boards would censure it and exclude it from the library over which the board is the guardian Yet nevertheless old, and new, it is still the rule or morals and manners for the Chris tian world. In claiming to be able to know just how Jesus would run the business of the modem world. Dr. Sheldon does not exceed bibical in structions while he directs his own movements, but a deliberate attempt to publish a newspaper as though Jesus were the publisher is an exhi bition of extraordinary self compla cency. Perhaps a better Bible stu nent can find authority in the books for treading in His footsteps and thus becoming another example of what a godlike man can do, but I fail to find such a passage. Fanatics have killed women, children and themselves un der the impression that the Bible directed them. Only the sanest, broadest mind can interpret the Bible for others. It Is singular that Christ himself refused to give specif ic rules in specified cases. When implored t rebuke this man or that, He picked up a little child or wrote on the ground, or gazed absent-mindedly past his interrogator. From the reports of Mathew, Mark, Luke, John, and the writer of The Acts it is very certain that if these were the days of His advent He would nor edit a news paper. The Robins. That early morning, plaintive itera tion, that is so much nearer and so much more human than that other sound of the morning, has begun. More than two weeks ago the robins arrived in this part of Nebraska and the cocks are only a distant echo if winter that sounds in our ears with out effect. The great multitude on their way north from the coast stop off by large companies in Nebraska, leav ing their comrades, who prefer a still more northern latitude, to keep on their way. Arizona. Occasionally a young, very pretty, and frivolous woman who happens to be married to a good, brare, devoted man, underestimates her good for tune, tires of the monotony of good ness and runs away with a villain. To insure a dramatic situation on the stage, a young and beautiful wife is forever fascinated and almost induced to run away with a man who swag-