‘Come, oh breath and breathe upon these slain.’ Photo: Henry Stanley Newman, Editor of The Friend 1897
‘The season is again upon us’: Editorial, 24th of 12th month, 1897
‘We stand humiliated at our economic strife and our frontier wars.’
The season is again upon us that men call the festival of peace and goodwill. Yet the atmosphere at home and national relationships abroad breathe the spirit of unrest rather than of abiding peace. Uncertainty like the rocking of a sea that cannot rest surrounds us, rather than the quiet waters that reflect the heaven above.
Whence shall the spirit of the Child of Bethlehem come to a restless world but from among men and women of goodwill, for the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by them that make peace? Peace must begin at the house of God and among the children of God. It is in the inmost heart it must first prevail. So long as ‘their heart goeth after their covetousness,’ there is strife between man and man, between employer and employed, between tariff and reciprocal tariff. Wars cannot cease until the mustard seed of faith in God springs up and overcomes the faith in big battalions and iron-clads. Come, oh breath and breathe upon these slain, that they may live, for nothing save the Spirit of Heaven can bring in peace. We stand humiliated at our economic strife and our frontier wars. It is well to pause under this humiliation and ask ourselves, How happens it that the Church has not leavened the nations with the mind of the Master, when nineteen centuries have well-nigh passed since the multitude of the heavenly host sang praises in the night for the coming of the Prince of Peace? Let His Spirit possess us, and we shall hear His voice among us, saying, Peace be unto you.
Reports from the Indian frontier show that war with the mountain tribes is no child’s play. The hardy mountaineers have stubbornly contested our advance, and now that our army appears to be retreating it has had to pass through galling fires from the tribesmen. These have, in many instances, been armed with the most modern weapons, and our own soldiers have had to learn by bitter experience how deadly are these instruments of destruction. Thus a Central News correspondent wires from Calcutta: ‘The fighting has further disclosed the terrible damage effected by the Dum Dum bullet, especially when the victim is struck upon the bone. A report just received from the hospitals at Rawal Pindi shows that the injuries inflicted upon our men when the enemy have been able to use the Lee Metford rifle have been truly dreadful. The piper was wounded in the ankle with a Dum Dum bullet. His bones were knocked to pulp, and it was found imperative to amputate the foot.’ Another piper suffered similarly. This is terrible enough for the wounded when in the hands of doctors equipped with the latest and most approved methods of science. It hardly seems to occur to the correspondent that the results of the injuries inflicted by our weapons upon tribesmen, the medical skill of whose medicine men is of a very elementary kind, must be still more terrible.
Editorials were unattributed in 1897, but we presume this was written by then-editor Henry Stanley Newman (left).
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