Editorial July 16, 1910 Issue

"DOTH NOT WISDOM CRY?"

John B. Willis

The average child needs to learn that the careless use of a match may involve the burning of a city; that it is foolish to run a great risk for a little fun, and that those who do not heed wisdom's call, are likely to get their lesson through suffering.

The American people have recently had a good opportunity to note that this need pertains also to adults, that the alert and thoughtful, respecting the most important matters even, are evidently few. We all know that to consent to the indulgence of the bestial impulses of the prize-ring is criminally unwise; that it excites the basest passions, and involves a hazard of possible ills such as no one can estimate. And yet the nation as a whole was utterly indifferent to these things until a bloody encounter had taken place, and the details of the degrading spectacle were rehearsed in the columns of well-nigh every daily paper in the country! Could anything be more discreditable to a professedly Christian people, or give more convincing evidence that we were specifically addressed by the apostle when he cried, "Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead!"

Having thus permitted the foul seed to be sown broadcast in human thought, having listlessly stood by while the torch was applied to the tinder of sensual impulse, we now wake up to the iniquity of the whole proceeding, the utter stupidity of the indifference which permitted these pugilists and their promoters to win a fortune regardless of the injury inflicted on the highest interests of the nation, and to impose the burden of a thousand times the amount of their own gains, perchance, upon the taxpayers of the country in repressing the resulting lawlessness and criminality! Manifestly we all need to learn again that it is folly—yes, a sin—to play with fire.

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