WE ARE NOT MARTIAL.

WE ARE NOT MARTIAL.

Gen. Shafter, heartily welcome, brings from the Pacific coast the opinion that the "Sanitago reunion will be a lesson for the coming generation and an encouraging example for the youth of the country." This is a little vague; but the general adds something more direct:

I think it a splendid thing to inculcate the martial spirit in the growing generation.

The martial spirit is nothing more lovely than the war spirit. A man whose patron saint is the god of war, Mars, is in the business of looking for cavalier treatment that he may be greatly concerned about his personal honor, but not greatly as to the righteousness of the cause in which he finds himself a fighter on one side or the other. He does not so much study to help his country to be right in its national and international relations, to inculcate a love for exact justice, as he does to spread the notion that he is carrying a chip and is quick to draw.

Of the martial spirit Americans have enough and on occasion some to spare.

The desire for war can flame up like a consuming fire with the sinking of a battleship in a harbor of a nation with which we are not at peace. But, lacking provocation, we Americans are not martial as a continuous affair. We provide a small army only; we resist in congress attempts to increase the number of our soldiers in times of peace. The army and the navy are paid to do our martial business; the people are mainly engaged in making a living. In this country, to change the words of the poet to suit or case:

But peaceful people over martial rulers sit;

Each others poise and counterbalance are.

We are not martial and there is no reason why we should be. We absorb thousands of emigrants who flee from other lands to escape the costliness and danger of the war spirit. We can fight like the devil when necessary, but in times of peace we are profoundly peaceful, as it should be among a people who are determined to have peace even if they have to fight for it at rare intervals to prove their devotion to the cause of the highest civilization, which does not include bloodletting either in a small or a large way. - Detroit Journal.

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A Detroit paper comments as follows on the importation of a lot of Hungarians to work in the shops of the American Car and Foundry company:

It is outrageous that the greedy trust in question is controlled by those who, during campaigns, join with all the other selfish interests of their kind in demanding that we "let well enough alone" and "stand pat," so far as our high protective tariff is concerned, in order that their particular friends, the American workingmen, may not be compelled to compete with the pauper labor of Europe.

It is marvelous that American workingmen should have so long been fooled by such brazen hypocrisy. It is marvelous that the spectacle of a million cheap laborers coming into the United States every year from the most undesirable portions of Europe should not have disclosed to them the extent of the protected interests' desire for their welfare.

The time of all times when the American workingman needs "protection" is when he is looking for a job.

Yet that is the very time that the selfish capitalists who deceive him into voting against his own interests, give the preference to a foreigner so steeped in ignorance as to render him unfit for decent American citizenship, merely because the foreigner will work more cheaply than the American.

The capacity of a majority of American workingmen for being buncoed by lying politicians seems to have no limit.

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Late reports from Washington say Russia has yielded to the United States and will open certain ports in Manchuria to United States commerce, thus securing the open door contended for by this nation. Just when these ports are to be opened, report does not say, and if Russian diplomacy is built up in falsehood as has been repeatedly reported in these same Washington dispatches, they may never be opened. The bear has probably given a diplomatic year to Uncle Sam's demands and will meet the obligation or not as suits her convenience. Russia probably has a desire to be friendly with the United States, more of a desire than she has with some other nations, but she is scarcely likely to change her settled policy to do this. She may have her axe to grind at this time and so desires to placate Uncle Sam, but we shall know better when she actually opens the door as she is said to have promised to do.

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The oleo law passed to prevent the coloring of that product has apparently been practically nullified by a decision of the supreme court. The first knockout of a state law of the kind occured in Massachusetts, when the Superior court of Boston held that if this product was colored through the natural color of any ingredient generally used in its manufacture this was not contrary to the law. The Michigan supreme court has now passed judgement on the Michigan law taking the same view. Now, if the supreme court of the United States holds this interpretation, there will be an end to a law which never had any proper excuse for being. Oleo makers should have the same right to color their product that butter makers have. If the product is labeled and sold for what it is, that is as far as the law should go.

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Pope Leo XIII is evidently very near the last of earth. His life has been a notable one and his has been one of the longest reigns in papal history. He has been a remarkable man, and has lived a life that would have caused him to be honored in any walk of life. He has been a man of great intellectual power as well as moral greatness. He has been disposed to liberalism and has always been the friend of America. His influence over the great organization of which he is the head has been very great and his power for good is recognized by other denominations. Should his successor be as good a man, as able and as liberal and open-minded, there will be little for anyone to criticize in the selection.