Jasper County Democrat, Volume 20, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 July 1917 — PHILOSOPHY OF WALT MASON [ARTICLE]

PHILOSOPHY OF WALT MASON

Where’er the German soldier walks, destruction, like his shadow, stalks. He comes upon some oldworld town, on which the ages have looked down, a town, perhaps, whose crumbling walls were builded by the ancient Gauls, as a protection for their home against the coriquerer from Rome.. All legended.and gray with age—the German wrecks it in his rage, and strews the storied buildings round, in blackened ruins, on the ground. The grand cathedral, which uprears, as it has done, a thousand years, its noble steeple to the sky, must in a heap of wreckage lie. Where’er the German soldier wends, all decent human feeling ends; should he, advance, or yet retire, he marks his path with death, and fire.. The kaiser throws his men away; “Let them be slain, if they shall slay; advance, however great the loss, and draw on me for one iron cross.” This, is the spirit of Red Bill: “What is the difference who we kill, or what we ruin and deface, though we may shock the human race, so we have gained another trench, or foiled the British or the French?’’ This is the savage foe we’ll meet —and batter till he owns defeat.