Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 183, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 August 1911 — The Onlooker [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The Onlooker

By WILBUR D. NESBIT

THE THINGS THAI KILL

(Colonel Krag, inventor of the KragJorgensen army gun, has submitted a new automatic army pistol and a new Improved army rifle to the ordnanoe board.) ® i

It will send a bolt of the bluest steel through a dozen men in line. It will, rip them through as a saw would do to a dozen planks of pine; We can greet a foe at five miles away with a sudden blast of death That shall speed as swift as the lightning’s flash and as silent aa a breath— For ’tis thus we work to the higher goal and ’tis thus we dream and plan Of the day to come when the world shall thrill with the brotherhood of man.

There are flaunting flags, there are -rolling drums, there are shrilling bugle calls. There are blaring bands and the gleam of swords on the sturdy fortress walls: There are mighty ships on the mighty deep and the lure of lands afar, And the pungent scent of powder smoke and the spick tang of tar — But the measure now of a nation’s might, of a nation’s forceful will, Is the battle line It may fling out and the men that it may kill. ,

There are children sick in the city slums, there are folk that want for bread, There are folk that toil through the day and night that they may be poorly fed: There. are houses dark where no laughter is, where there is no lilt of song— There are unknown souls who are laboring to remove this grievous wrong. But the folks who go ever tirelessly to relieve the sick and poor, They are never named, they are never cheered, for they make the things that cure.

And we preach and pray of the coming day when all men shall be as one, But we pin our faith to the mine and shell and the distance-melting gun. Shall our eyes be closed to the shaming truth that there ig no peace of strife, That we have no pride when we render death to that of giving life? Oh, the flag of health in a wan child’s cheek gives the heart a grander thrill Than the belching smoke and the blight- - ing stroke of the roaring things that kill!