Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 January 1914 — WARFARE WAGED BY YOUTH [ARTICLE]

WARFARE WAGED BY YOUTH

Youngsters Always In the Front Ranks When the Dogs of War Are Loosed. Our own civil war was fought by youngsters, gaining the physique of maturity upon the weary march, coming into their manhood upon the field of battle. The youth of Russia and Japan was drawn upon to settle the dispute between the robbers of a third nation’s lands. Scarce half the soldiers of the Balkan allies, it is said, had down upon their cheeks, and'in Mexico the guerrilla warfare is carri«d on by boys who in a more advanced country would be'' in school. It is probably true that since the days when entire nations made a profession of fighting, lived by conquest, and prospered by the loot they took, war has been a duty assigned always to striplings. If youth made war, there would be less of gross immorality about it But youth is only the pawns of the fighting, only the creatures to be shot down, to he exposed to privation and disease, to be laid open to the sins and temptations that trail lq the wake of armies. It has not always been realized how little a part the fighters of any war have with its contriving. But that realization must come home to q nation which takes account of the loss of its virility through war. the sacrifice of its adventurous spirit, which in other directions might have wrought quite wonderful things. Perhaps in this new way we have of looking at the rising generation as the best asset of a country the world will think more of the wastes of war, more of the damage it does to itself. Through that might come the universal peace we pray for.