Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 155, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 July 1918 — SLACKERS OLD AND NEW [ARTICLE]

SLACKERS OLD AND NEW

By CYRUS TOWNSEND BRADY of the Vigilantes. The papers chronicle day by day the steady advance of the British soldiers northward through Palestine. Their lines extend from the Jordan to the sea and they are slowly but surely driving the Turks before them in this latest, greatest and most decisive crusade. If the followers of Mahomet can make any stand against the followers of Christ it will surely be in the plain of Esdrafelon, one of the natural battlefields of the world. It is singular how some places lend themselves inevitably to conflict. The plain of Jezreel, to give it another name, is one of these. It has been fought over continually since Thothmes there defeated the Hittites in the dawn of recorded history. Jew and Gentile; Canaanite, Assyrian, Babylonian, Scythian, Persian, Greek and Roman contested for its mastery in the East; English, French, Italian, German, Arabian, and Turk from Godfrey and Richard and Saladin to Napoleon drenched its fertile soil with blood in more modem times.. May the forthcoming be the last of its many battles, and Allenby the last of the long line of crusaders. One of the most decisive of the conflicts upon that plain occurred in 1296 B. C. when Barak, the Lightning, inspired by Deborah led ten thousand men down the slopes of Mount Tabor in a successful night onfall and surprise of the army of the oppressor. Jabin of Hazor, under the command of Slsera. The Hazorites were disastrously defeated, driven in panic terror down .the narrow pass cut by the Klshon, then in full flood, and killed or drowned in large numbers. Deborah made a great song about the triumph. One stanza runs this way: “Curse ye Meroz, said the Angel of the Lord, curse ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof; because they came not to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty.” No one knows where Meroz lay. No ruined vestiges remain to identify it. There is no other mention of it in the pages of history. There is no ground even for speculation about it. Yet for over thirty-two centuries it has been pilloried in its Infamy in that immortal song. Whatever its prosperity and its works, whatever its hopes and achievements, the loves and hates, the successes or failures, of its people—they are all forgotten in the blistering, withering condemnation of the singer. It stands as a place accursed forever. Perhaps its utter oblivion Is the result of the merited condemnation. Shall there be written against our city, against our land, the curse of Meroz? Shall we apply to these and to ourselves this slackers’ text? Or shall we come to the help of the Lord today, tomorrow and forever, in the great conflict now, and at all times, being waged in Europe and everywhere against sin and the devil? Curse ye Meroz? Non nobis, Domine —Not unto us, Oh Lord!