The Audacious War

The Audacious War

The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Audacious War, by Clarence W.
Barron
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Title: The Audacious War
Author: Clarence W. Barron

Release Date: April 5, 2006 [eBook #18125]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
AUDACIOUS WAR***
E-text prepared by Al Haines

THE AUDACIOUS WAR
by

CLARENCE W. BARRON

Boston and New York Houghton Mifflin Company The Riverside Press
Cambridge 1915 Copyright, 1914 and 1915, by the Boston News
Bureau Company Copyright, 1915, by Clarence W. Barron All Rights
Reserved Published February 1915
THIRD IMPRESSION

IF!
Suppose 't were done! The lanyard pulled on every shotted gun; Into
the wheeling death-clutch sent Each millioned armament, To grapple
there On land, on sea and under, and in air! Suppose at last 't were
come-- Now, while each bourse and shop and mill is dumb And
arsenals and dockyards hum,-- Now all complete, supreme, That vast,
Satanic dream!--
Each field were trampled, soaked, Each stream dyed, choked, Each
leaguered city and blockaded port Made famine's sport; The empty
wave Made reeling dreadnought's grave; Cathedral, castle, gallery,
smoking fell 'Neath bomb and shell; In deathlike trance Lay industry,
finance; Two thousand years' Bequest, achievement, saving, disappears
In blood and tears, In widowed woe That slum and palace equal know,
In civilization's suicide,-- What served thereby, what satisfied? For
justice, freedom, right, what wrought? Naught!--
Save, after the great cataclysm, perhap On the world's shaken map New
lines, more near or far, Binding to king or czar In festering hate Some
newly vassaled state; And passion, lust and pride made satiate; And just
a trace Of lingering smile on Satan's face! --Boston News Bureau Poet.
This poem has been called the great poem of the war. It was written just
preceding the war, and published August 1 by the "Boston News
Bureau." Of it, and its author, Bartholomew P. Griffin, the following

was written by Rev. Francis G. Peabody: "The English poets, Bridges,
Kipling, Austin, and Noyes, have all tried to meet the need and all have
lamentably failed. I am proud not only that an American, but that a
Harvard man, should have risen to the occasion."

PREFACE
The Scotch have this proverb: "War brings poverty. Poverty brings
peace. Peace brings prosperity. Prosperity brings pride. And pride
brings war again." Shall the world settle down to the faith that there is
no redemption from an everlasting round of pride, war, poverty, peace,
prosperity, pride, and war again?
But it was not primarily to settle, or even study this problem that I
crossed the ocean and the English Channel in winter. As a journalist
publishing the Wall Street Journal, the Boston News Bureau, and the
Philadelphia News Bureau, and directing news-gathering for the
banking and financial communities, I deemed it my duty to ascertain at
close hand the financial factors in this war, and the financial results
therefrom.
I found myself on the other side, not only in the domain of the finance
encircling this war, but unexpectedly in close touch with diplomatic
and government circles. The whole of the war, its commercial causes,
its financial and military forces, its tremendous human sacrifices, the
conflicting principles of government, and the world-wide issues
involved, all lay out in clear facts and figures after I had gathered by
day and night from what appeared at first to be a tangled web.
I learned who made this war, and why at this time and for what
purposes, present and prospective; and from facts that could not be set
down categorically in papers of state. No papers, "white," "gray," or
"yellow," could present a picture of the war in its inception and the
reasons therefor.
There is no powerful organization over nations to keep the peace of

Europe or of the world, as nations are in organization over states, and
states over cities, to insure peace and justice, without strife or human
sacrifice.
The immediate causes of this war, and I believe they have not before
been presented on this side of the ocean, are connected with
commercial treaties, protective tariffs, and financial progress.
It may be wondered that in our country, which is the home of the
protective tariff system and boasts its great prosperity therefrom, there
has been as yet no presentation of the business causes beneath this war.
Our great journalists are trained to find interesting, picturesque, and
saleable news features from big events. Details of war's atrocities and
destructions are to most people of the greatest human interest, and