Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 March 1919 — WHEN PEACE CAME [ARTICLE]

WHEN PEACE CAME

Oppressive Silence Followed the Great Crash. Hard at First to Realize That tha Carnage of Four Dreadful Years Had Ended—Huns Defeated' * but Unrepentant. With a silence like that which follows the mighty crash of a great organ. the great war came suddenly to an end. No longer do tin 1 weary soldiers at listening p<»ts strain their ears-througlt long night- watches --starshells have ceased to burst and flame over No Man’s land; cautions have cooled; machine gun< utter no sound; the exchange of all manner of deadly missiles, has stopped.— At last peace, which foe four slow, dreadful years has seemed afar off like a mirage, has come. The thousand and one activities of battle, intense to the last ounce of possible human effort, are relaxed. siii|'stiox\ <To-<-the- o<■,•:<ll in safety; smoke from thousands of ammunition plants no longer darkens the sky; tired workers return once more to „are demobilizing!" reconstruction of devastated homes End farms ami factories is contem plated; the dreadful military debauch has consumed itself; the world draws a great sigh of exhaustion and relief; the conflict is ended In all history no message ever sped so gladly nor so last as the few words flashed through the air, and under oceans, and over land wires, until around the whole world and to its uttermost accessible parts the news was carried. What wonder that all civilization ga,ye vent to a frenzy of joy almost barbaric, that men shouted and women wept; and little children witnessed an event which threescore "years and ten hence they will relate to other wide-eyed children. In our joy let us not forget those millions thers whose voices refused to cheer, and those mothers and wives and sweethearts whose eyes were dry, because their hearts were bowed down With' a sorrow no victory can ever compensate. The Huns ceased only when physically exhausted; when their ammunition was spent; when the war had reached their own borders; when they no longer possessed the ability to murder the defenseless, to gas the brave. Their regret is that they failed, but not one single word of penitence for the harm they have done, the sorrow they have caused. Instead they think only of their bellies and demand, not ropplicate, the food they have so wantonly destroyedbfpr years; they whine leet the very cars they stole from France and Belgium be returned to their rightful owners. They have been beaten in what was for nearly four years an unequal struggle, but for any word which has yet?-to come out of Germany they are the same unregen"erate Huns who, casting aside all the obligations of a civilized nation, marched into Belgium in August, 1914. —Chicago Evening Post.