Saturday, January 25, 1936

The Charlotte News

EDITORIAL

Site Ed. Note: The remainder of the quote preceding and following the abstract below from Mysterious Stranger is:

" 'I know your race. It is made up of sheep. It is governed by minorities, seldom or never by majorities. It suppresses its feelings and its beliefs and follows the handful that makes the most noise. Sometimes the noisy handful is right, sometimes wrong; but no matter, the crowd follows it. The vast majority of the race, whether savage or civilized, are secretly kind-hearted and shrink from inflicting pain, but in the presence of the aggressive and pitiless minority they don't dare to assert themselves. Think of it! One kind-hearted creature spies upon another, and sees to it that he loyally helps in iniquities which revolt both of them. Speaking as an expert, I know that ninety-nine out of a hundred of your race were strongly against the killing of witches when that foolishness was first agitated by a handful of pious lunatics in the long ago. And I know that even to-day, after ages of transmitted prejudice and silly teaching, only one person in twenty puts any real heart into the harrying of a witch. And yet apparently everybody hates witches and wants them killed. Some day a handful will rise up on the other side and make the most noise--perhaps even a single daring man with a big voice and a determined front will do it--and in a week all the sheep will wheel and follow him, and witch-hunting will come to a sudden end.
" 'Monarchies, aristocracies, and religions are all based upon that large defect in your race--the individual's distrust of his neighbor, and his desire, for safety's or comfort's sake, to stand well in his neighbor's eye. These institutions will always remain, and always flourish, and always oppress you, affront you, and degrade you, because you will always be and remain slaves of minorities. There was never a country where the majority of the people were in their secret hearts loyal to any of these institutions.'

"I did not like to hear our race called sheep, and said I did not think they were.

" 'Still, it is true, lamb,' said Satan. 'Look at you in war--what mutton you are, and how ridiculous!'

" 'In war? How?'

" '[Quote below.] ...Before long you will see this curious thing: the speakers stoned from the platform, and free speech strangled by hordes of furious men who in their secret hearts are still at one with those stoned speakers--as earlier--but do not dare to say so. And now the whole nation--pulpit and all--will take up the war-cry, and shout itself hoarse, and mob any honest man who ventures to open his mouth; and presently such mouths will cease to open. Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.'" (from Chapter 9)

"Satan", the nephew of Satan, is, of course, a metaphorically named character in the book--at least it would so seem, an anthropomorphization for the author's, or any fiction author's, imagination? And there is a dastardly priest-accuser--named Adolf--and an equally dastardly accuser, an astrologer, who falsely accuses the good priest of theft of gold not belonging to the astrologer, all brought about only by the conjurings of "Satan"; yet "Satan", also through conjurings, frees the wrongly accused, though in the bargain drives him mad--but happy in his madness, through Wilhelm, the momentarily enchanted lawyer of the accused who finds the dates on the supposedly stolen coins to be post the astrologer's claimed ownership. Oh, you Missouri river-rat and your imagination.

Wonder what Cash imagined the story and its opinings ascribed to Satan's nephew to bespeak in January, 1936?

Mark Twain On War.

Concerning the motive of war, Mark Twain, our great American humorist, penned some rather serious lines that will no doubt live and apply to war for another million years.

In his "Mysterious Stranger" he laid down an endurable formula for war:

"There has never been a just one, never an honorable one--on the part of the instigator of war," he said. "The loud little handful--as usual--will shout about war. The pulpit will, warily and cautiously, object--at first; the great, big, dull bulk of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes and try to make out why there should be war, and will say, earnestly and indignantly, 'It is unjust and dishonorable, and there is no necessity for it'... Then the handful will shout louder. A few fair men on the other side will argue and reason against the war with speech and pen, and at first will have a hearing and be applauded; but it will not last long; those others will outshout them, and presently the anti-war audiences will thin out and lose popularity."

Framed Edition

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