Clamorous for American sympathy and cash, we have on our shores
embassies from the belligerents, pleading their respective virtues and
sorrows.
Why, after all, should our chiefest concern be with them? Surely we may
be good Samaritans without a total disregard of our own interests and a
blindness to opportunity verging on impotency. There is no immorality in
the proper play of self-interest. It is the conflict of interests which
creates morality. But the spectators, even the maddest baseball "fans,"
do not play the game nor train for it. It is high time we ceased wasting
our energies in emotions and vain babble.
At this writing the first line of defense against the Oriental deluge is
endangered. The Slav individually and in his primitive culture is
altogether charming. He is a son of the soil, picturesque in life and
creative; he is minstrel and poet, seer. But so far he is the carrier of
a low civilization, the prophet, priest, and king of autocracy and
absolutism. Never has there been a time in history when the higher
civilization was not in a savage struggle for existence. It is almost
the first time in three centuries that the highest civilizations were in
alliance with the lowest; not since the pugnacious Western powers of
Europe sued for favor at the Sublime Porte.
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