Iowa Heritage Digital Collections
State Library of Iowa

1919 Yearbook

1919 Yearbook

Title

1919 Yearbook

Description

governments from the zenith of their power, to a condition, that hardly
eserved the name of civilization.
The great clock of time was witness to their downfall. It struck the
hour long ago when Persia and Babylon with their immense libraries and
luxurious palaces crumbled in decay. . It tolled the hour centuries back,
when the refined and cultured Graecian civilization, with its theater, its
games and its schools, was no more. That government in its day bred a
love for philosophy, a liking for architecture and a passion for beauty; and
yet all these achievements gave way to the sinister happiness that is found
in ease and comfort. The clock of time saw the rise and fall of the great
Roman empire with all its laws, learning, pomp and vast dominions. It
saw the birth and evolution of these governments of old which like blossoms and buds of spring came forth, gave good fruit for a time, and then
withered and died. But over their tomb—over their ruins of the work of
their hands—this epitaph could be inscribed: "They rose in simplicity,
developed in glory and perished in luxury." The Christian ideal of justice
was foreign to their systems. Duty was unknown to them. They lacked
the soul of democracy which makes governments prudent, just and temperate in their conduct and unflinching in their ideals.
But what of our modern civilizations ? Judging the present from the
past, let us hark and listen whether the hymns of hate, like those that
echoed forth in by-gone days from corrupt nations, are not issuing from
the mouths of our modern governments. Yes, they are heard today in as
fierce and threatening tones. They are the mad howlings of autocracy and
loud rumblings of Socialist state. *
The hymn of hate in accents unmistakeable from the German government. They tell of a passion for dominion. They cry for power. They
thirsted for the blood of Belgium, the territory of France and the gold of
England. They are not happy but they seek happiness in conquest, piracy
and plunder. They boast of their perfidy and treachery—their broken
pledges and violated treaties. They have no rlegard for justice. They
have might or "power" for their religion, their God and their all. But
power blinds men. It deadens the voice of conscience and in its presence
the conception of justice vanishes.' It is not to be wondered at then why
the German government broke her most solemn contracts and treated the
most sacred of treaties as scraps of paper and worse still why she disregarded the laws of morality divinely ordained and divinely imprinted on
human nature. She murdered most brutally the innocent children and
women of friend and foe; she desecrated God's cathedrals; she plundered
the most sacred shrines and even destroyed the wayside grottoes where in
their hour of grief the bleeding hearts of Belgium and France might
receive comfort and consolation. No! the German autocracy respected
neither God or man, hers is truly the hymn of hate—the hate of justice, of
holiness and sincerity—the hate of God and the hate of humanity. - Oh!
the clock of time must not and shall not strike the death taps of the present
age until that militaristic government shall have been vanquished and
destroyed and a new government with the soul of democracy exhaling the

Date

1919

Rights

St. Ambrose University, 518 W. Locust St., Davenport, IA 52803

Identifier

http://cdm16810.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p16810coll2/id/4557