Mother Earth No. 4, June 1906 Part 4

"G.o.ddesses enthroned in solitude, Surrounded not by time or place, These are the mothers!

About them formed and formless, Eternal stability and endless change In images of all created life."

Thus does Goethe describe the depths of being which enclose the eternal mystery of motherhood, leading not into known, but unknown paths.

And truly, how far have we strayed from the path of true and natural feeling when we seek to justify motherhood from the standpoint of expediency and custom! It is something in itself holy, and is its own reason for being. I ask all mothers, all real mothers, when their child comes to them, with eyes br.i.m.m.i.n.g with childlike love and affection, against which all else counts for naught, I ask them do they think whether that child is legitimate or what is called an illegitimate child? No! the joy of motherhood completely fills the heart, there is no room for other feelings, and truly the answer comes, Nature does not discriminate between the legitimate and illegitimate mothers, any more than she labels the children brought into the world as such. And this alone is the foundation to which we must hold fast. Nature acknowledges motherhood only, wisely providing for its needs. Not so marriage, which is a form men have given their s.e.x relations, and established from the standpoint of social and economic exigencies and considerations, it is consequently subject to limitations and changes. Motherhood is an eternal force lying at the root of life, not subjected to time or change.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

OBJECT LESSON FOR ADVOCATES OF GOVERNMENTAL CONTROL.

By ARTHUR G. EVERETT, N--M.

THE best literary efforts possible have been exhausted in a vain effort to convey to those fortunately not in San Francisco on the morning of April 18, 1906, what terrible things resulted from the earthquake and the fire which left that city a complete ruin; likewise has the kodak and the camera--though busy at work while the flames roared around the operator driving him, from one vantage point to another, before its resistless power--failed to depict in its entirety the horrors, the tragedies that followed in the wake of the crumbling walls, the crackling flames that licked up alike palatial mansions and the squalid homes of the poor, not content to feast upon the products of the forests of California and the Eastern States alone, but, with the strategy of a warrior, surrounded and penned within four walls hundreds of human beings, stalwart men, delicate women, and babes at the breast, who were then slowly roasted to death upon the funeral pyre of San Francisco.

Upon the minds and hearts of the survivors, alone, who walked between the walls of fire those days, who escaped the frightful holocaust but by a miracle while loved ones perished before their eyes, are written, are recorded, too complete, too vivid, those terrible scenes, and fain would they efface from their mind's negative those pictures of horrors which now turn their dreams of the night into such a frightful nightmare that they dread to close their eyes in slumber.

While the horrors of the earthquake and fire were so terrible, yet there was something far worse, for the earthquake and fire were beyond human control, but the still worse acts of the soldiers into whose hands the control of the city were delegated could have been restrained by the authorities had they so chosen; now that the world is being made aware of the fact that the soldiers ruthlessly shot down men and women--yes, women as well as men; in one case a woman was shot down by a soldier because she dared to light a match to see where to lay her little sick baby down--and that without any justification other than the order of their superiors who likewise were so ordered by the authorities--a natural result of governmental control--hence they are doing all they can to controvert the facts regarding the brutal murders and worse of the soldiers. In one case they went so far as to threaten the confiscation of a printery if the editor did not call in and suppress an issue in which was printed an article by a marine telling of seeing the soldiers shoot down the inmates of a hotel so surrounded by fire it seemed they else must be burned up--the excuse the soldiers gave for shooting them--and so the soldiers shot them down to save (?) them. The marine in this article did not tell how many of those thus shot down by the soldiers were only wounded and writhed in agony on the increasing heated floor until the fiery fiend ended their misery from the gun shot wounds.

Brevity precludes going into details of what is already a matter of history; of the soldiers shooting the inmates of an improvised hospital that were unable to be moved when the fire surrounded the building; of the soldiers shooting an old man for refusing to work, though so infirm with age that he had to walk with a cane; of the shooting of a Red Cross man while in his auto on a deed of mercy bent; of the man shot in the back for talking back to a soldier, and that after he had turned away from the drunken brute; of the shooting of a man for having whisky in his possession and refusing to give it up--that the soldiers had plenty is in evidence from the fact that a large per cent. were so drunk that they could walk with but difficulty--of their insulting women, and even far worse than mere insult also; of shooting persons for looting while they themselves did the same; all this and much more and worse are known to be true, and, in the language of another writer on this same subject, "Strive as they may the authorities will never be able to whitewash the military abominations inflicted upon San Francisco and vicinity." In this regard the same writer says most truly:

"The rulers of the State furnished us an example of 'anarchy,'

according to their own definition of the term."

In times like these it brings out what is in the man, and these murders and lesser brutalities of the soldiers while policing San Francisco tell us that the soldier is but an infuriated thug, ready to do murder and rapine at the first opportunity; the civic authorities of Oakland recognized this as a fact when they finally allowed the reopening of the saloons, for the barkeepers were specially interdicted from selling or giving liquor to soldiers; they were already loaded too heavy with murderous instincts and propensities and it would not do to run the risk of touching off that magazine of murder with the match of whisky.

These brutal butcheries and rapine by the soldiers while thus in control of San Francisco are the legitimate fruits of governmental control, and it would be well for those who are so strenuously advocating militarism--the true name for Governmental Control--to bear these things in mind, for such horrors would be the daily menu under such system, for there is lots of the savage in the most of us and it needs but to put a gun in the hands of some and decorate them with bra.s.s b.u.t.tons with U. S.

inscribed thereon to bring to the surface--like a plaster on a boil--all the native savagery there is in the man; personally, I would prefer to run my chances among the Head Hunters on the Isle of Borneo than among uniformed thugs protected and encouraged by martial law to carry out their natural murderous propensities as was the case in San Francisco, following the earthquake on the morning of April 18, 1906.

THE GENIUS OF WAR

By JOHN FRANCIS VALTER.

_I am the Genius of War.

My standard's the Skull and the Bones.

I raise my voice--I stamp my foot, And legions rise out of the ground._

_Armies advance and retreat, Poisoned, diseased and maimed: All that is left is a grewsome aspect To the moonlight, the ghouls and Me._

_All this to a laudable end:-- The general has his star; Shylock his four per cent; The contractor's wife a costly gem To enhance her vulgar charms; The mother a harvest of tears; The wife a broken heart; The unborn babe a prenatal curse; While I have my surfeit of blood_.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

DIGNITY SPEAKS.

"Hark ye, millions, and tremble! I am more powerful than the Law.

Together with my sister, Respectability, I reach far beyond the boundary of the authority of governments. I am supreme.

Behold the miserable criminal, desperately resisting the brutal treatment of the police officer. I shall force him to his knees. I shall subdue him. Enthroned upon the seat of Justice, robed in the solemn black of my sacred office, I shall break the rebel's spirit.

'Tis in this that the highest refinement of tyranny manifests itself--it enters into the very innermost depths of the human mind and there it ravages, till its foul breath has withered the last resistance of the unfortunate soul, and the consciousness of self is destroyed; this accomplished, the man himself is dead.

The Law! See how the timid ma.s.ses cower at the mere mention of my name.

See them tremble as I enter the arena of the Legislature.

The Dignity of the Law!

The Majesty of the Law!

It must forever remain my great secret that the Law is the Cerberus that guards the portals of our earthly paradise against the common herd--we must not be disturbed in our orgies.

The Law! 'Tis our beastly greediness, our bloodthirsty rapacity expressed in statutes. 'Tis the insatiety of the human beasts of prey immortalized in jurisprudence, and I, Dignity, sanctify all that.

As a captain of industry, as a prince of commerce, or as a king of finance, I speak with solemn face of the heavy responsibilities that rest upon those to whose care G.o.d, in his infinite wisdom, has entrusted the wealth of the universe; I speak with zeal of the sacred duty of the rich to lend a helping hand to our less fortunate brothers; I never tire to emphasize the necessity of wise stewards.h.i.+p.

In the meantime, I exploit the "poor brothers" and I appropriate the lion's share of the fruit of his labor; he is made to pay me an usurious profit on my investments.

I fill my shops and factories with men, women and children, and I trans.m.u.te the base metal of their bones into the n.o.ble coin of the realm; my coffers grow fat, my slaves grow lean, but I acquire the reputation of a public benefactor, a public-spirited citizen, a n.o.ble humanitarian.

As military commander, as a great general, I eulogize the heroism and self-sacrifice of my blind slaves and hirelings that have returned from a successful campaign against a weaker nation. I speak of the great benefit that the success of our arms will confer upon the people, I emphasize its stimulating effect upon the progress of our country and upon our civilization.

Yet while my anointed lips pour forth these solemn lies, my mind travels over the b.l.o.o.d.y fields of carnage; I behold the thousands of the slain, the mutilated bodies, the torn limbs, the streams of human blood....

I stand in the pulpit and call the faithful to prayer. I thunder eternal curses upon the heads of the unbelievers; I threaten the people with the torments of h.e.l.l and I try to bribe them by the promise of heaven.

Believe, live and be saved, I cry. Or else you will die and be d.a.m.ned!

For I am the visible representative on earth of those invisible, extra-mundane spirits whom man, in his fear and ignorance, created to his own continued mental enslavement.

Terrified, sin lies prostrate at my feet. It does not know that a sick conscience is a characteristic trait of all slaves. It is the universal self-accuser. Were the people--individually and collectively--to sin on a grand scale, were they to refuse to be the puppets of the man-made idols--were that to happen, masters and slaves would cease to be.

The tyrants of the world are under great obligations to me. They must not forget this. For if they should, I will unfold my solemn black robe, I will smooth the hypocritical lines on my face--then shall the world behold all the filth and corruption that I, Dignity, hide."