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Butler University Digital Commons @ Butler University Butler Alumnal Quarterly University Special Collections 1919 Butler Alumnal Quarterly (1919) Butler University Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.butler.edu/bualumnalquarterly Part of the Other History Commons Recommended Citation Butler University, "Butler Alumnal Quarterly (1919)" (1919). Butler Alumnal Quarterly. Book 9. http://digitalcommons.butler.edu/bualumnalquarterly/9 This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the University Special Collections at Digital Commons @ Butler University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Butler Alumnal Quarterly by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Butler University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 5 ^^:,sSb^2b.^SSbt!iSSx^3S7sSb?S^hsmp.^^^^ .h.i,No.^7"ii;.ni2.0^. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2010 with funding from Lyrasis IVIembers and Sloan Foundation http://www.archive.org/details/butleralumnalqua08butl Butler Alumnal Quarterly •^PERTy-^;^ ., ^[i^:^*:^ IButie; s.. APRIL, 1919 Vol. VIII No. 1 INDIANAPOLIS Entered as second-class matter March 26, 1912, at the post office at Indianapolis, Ind., under the Act of March 3, 1879. ?HY BE CONTENT with ordinary jewelry when you may have our special designs and high grade workman- ship at no higher prices? It is human nature to admire the beautiful. To combine use and beauty is the highest art in craftsmanship. This is our aim in making jewelry. We want you to judge of the result by an examination of our stock. Our frat and school jewelry is of the same high quality and moderate price. C. B. DYER, JEWELER 234 MASSACHUSETTS AVENUE Our things are different ^ (1) ! ; : : : Malcolm , I would the friends we miss were safe arrived, SiWARD . Some must go off : and yet, by these I see, So great a day as this is cheaply bought. Malcolm. Macduff is missing, and your noble son. Ross : Your son, my lord, has paid a soldier 's debt He only lived but till he was a man The which no sooner had his prowess confirm 'd In the unshrinking station where he fought, But like a man he died. SiWARD Then he is dead? Ross. Ay, and brought off the field: your cause of sorrow Must not be measured by his worth, for then It hath no end. SiWARD. Had he his hurts before? Ross : Ay, on the front. SiWARD. Why, then God's soldier be he! Had I as many sons as I have hairs, I would not wish them to a fairer death And so his knell is knoll 'd. Malcolm. He's worth more sorrow, And that I'll spend for him. SiWARD. He's worth no more: Thej^ say he parted well, and paid his score And so God b ' wi ' him Macbeth V, 8. (2) ButlerUniverslta ' ~ '.:. ^?".?;*' Butler Alumnal Quarterly Vol. VIII INDIANAPOLIS, IND., APRIL, 1919 No. 1 The War and Precedents By John H. Holliday, ex- '62 Society is ruled by precedent. All habits and customs are part of it. Almost all rules and methods of action are dictated by it. Precedent may be called the stored knowledge of experience. Often it has outlived its causes and usefulness, but society lets go of it with great reluctance. The inertia of human nature maintains it. Men do things because their fathers did them, to be followed in course by their sons. Whenever new or apparently new conditions arise that call for action, the first thing is to inquire what has been done under the same or similar circumstances and to hunt for a precedent that may solve the difficulty in whole or in part. The whole science of the law is reduced to this treatment. How was an issue determined, by what authorities and how many? How nearly do the present facts agree with past decisions. If identical, the same ruling must apply ; if dissimilar, the shades of difference must be analyzed and the differences minified or accentuated as interest demands. This procedure is not more actively existent in the law than in other forms of expression. It is only more apparent from the nature of things. The law has to deal with the settlement of dis- puted issues, but in the myriad activities of life in other relations, comparatively few of these become subjects of serious controversy and precedent is used only as a guide or direction for adjustment. Frequently it is found inadequate and a new method of doing something is evolved, which in turn becomes a precedent. Eegard (3) 4 Butler Alumnal Quarterly * for precedent within a very large range is wise and reasonable, for what is knowledge for but to be applied to the problems of life, and if experience is not to be availed of in this way what would life be ? It is only in the abuses that evolve in instances, mainly where conditions have changed through the passage of time, that we can complain of ineffectiveness and injustice. These are but the fringe of the garment, the comparatively few exceptions in the working of any great fact, or law. Hence society must depend upon precedent that it may run as smoothly as possible and that the conservatism of human nature, that great factor of life, be maintained. In long periods of dura- tion, however, precedents are obliterated and superseded by alter- ing conditions, but they are so used or amended that the transition seems to be and often is a natural evolution, causing no abrupt change in the peacefiJ current of events. It is not always so, however. There come periods of revolutionary activity in society, the influence of new discoveries, the perception of new truths or new bearings of old truths, eruptions of nature that create new thoughts which change habits quickly and upset fixed conceptions. The most apparent cause is the conflict of war, physical force. In some such experiences precedents are wiped out, leaving no vestige. New conditions appear for which history finds no counterpart and society has nothing to fall back on. It must then take the initiative and originate its own methods of settlement, devise a new way of living. At such periods humanity is usually dazed for a time; it is like a colony of bees when the hive is tumbled over. It loses its bearings in the face of the untried. "When the war now ending began, many felt that civilization was done for and all precedents were destroyed. This was not strange. For one thing the world had come to believe that war between any of the great powers was an impossibility because they were too enlightened and the cost would be too great to pay. Further that war was barbaric and its day had gone, as had that of private warfare, or the duel. Ci\nlization forbade it. People who believed the world was committed to the reign of law were as certain of this as is the man who, trusting to the protection of the police, The War and Precedents 5 can not conceive the attack of the robber who holds him 117^ in his own office in broad daylight. Besides there had been so many adjustments and compromises of international differences, that they had come to believe these would be always settled in peace. A very large contingent based their trust in the belief that Chris- tianity would not permit war and when war did come immediately declared Christianity was a failure, as shallow a view as it was fallacious. But whatever the view no greater shock ever came to the world than when Germany plunged into war. The unexpected and the impossible happened. The precedents were broken down. The developments of the conflict all went to confirm and prolong this addled confusion. At almost every stage new elements ap- peared. It was evident at once that Germany had been preparing for years in the essentials of warfare. Later it developed that she had been preparing in other ways never imagined, such as the education of her own people in the doctrines of Kultur, the belief that they were the superior people to whom God had given the mission to rule the earth, and that might was right. Preparation was not confined to her own people but German propaganda in insidious and powerful forms had pervaded the other nations. Her spies and agents seemed to be everywhere, lavish spending money and means to corrupt and injure enemies or neutrals in whatever way would enure to Germany's advantage then or thereafter. We know now how much of this was done in our own country, at once the object of envy and hatred by Germany, and how her policy was to array nations against nations and friends against friends by all sorts of intrigue and falsehood. In time it dawned upon the world that Germany had no moral convictions or standards of right or wrong, no honor, no truth, no humanity, no soul, nothing but absolute selfishness that stopped at nothing but force and that only as long as it was exerted. How dreadful was the revelation in comparison with the im- pression of the German, based largely in this country on our ac- quaintance with immigrants of a previous generation and their descendants. We pictured them as a gentle and friendly people, home-loving, full of homely qualities, careful, thrifty, industrious, " 6 Butler Alumnal Quarterly peaceable, honest, fair minded, not given to extremes, a people devoted to music and art, to literature and philosophy, a people of wonderful practical genius in science and methods of living. We idealized them. But Germany had been getting ready for a long time. Bismarck said after the Franco-Prussian war that it would be insignificant in comparison with the next one.

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