Frank Weller, Mitchell, S.D.-- South Dakota has liberal-minded people and liberal divorce laws. Here is a good place for free thinkers and liberal-minded people of all beliefs to locate and help to make our laws still more liberal. When the law allows the people to make a contract to live together as man and wife and to separate as such upon the application of either, then you have it just about as you want it, as I get the idea from reading Lucifer. South Dakota comes as near to it, if not nearer than any other state, and with a little more proper pressure, very likely some legislature would modify the law right up to that point. We want more liberal-minded settlers. There are good openings for all industrious people in all ines. Farm lands can be had on easy terms and low rates of interest, at from $15 to $20 per acre. The creamery industry is just starting, and all parts of Davidson and Hanson counties are accessible to creameries. Lands can be had in large or small tracts. Diversified farming and dairying is very profitable. Here is a good chance for thrifty people to locate, either in colonies or separately and be sure of prosperit. I will be glad to answer letters from those interested.
W.A Wotherspoon, 742 S. 13th street, Denver, Col.---The enclosed clipping will interest you. The "deporting" of Amalie Witkroft and Rudolph Rocke was a flagrant violation of law as well as justice, but the fact that it is given a prominent place in many great daily papers will cause thousands to thik, and save many souls from the dry rot of superstition. The main thing is to make people think. We are suffering mostly from mental paralysis. Anything that stimulates mental action is beneficial. Even our present war with Spain which will redound principally to the glory, honor and emolument of Mark Hanna and his pals, will stimulate thousands to think, and thus help along the progress of the world. Lucifer keeps up its standard of excellence. May its light continue to spread into the surrounding darkness.
[Our thanks are due to Friend Wotherspoon for the clipping, with prominent heading and pictures of the deported pair, taken from the "Rocky Mountain News" (Denver) of June 5, showing that the "high-handed outrage" recently committed by the managers of the "Immigration bureau" is attracting attention from liberty-loving and justice-loving people everywhere]
E.C Walker, 244 W. 143d street, new York City.---Dear H.: You may recall that you used to facetiously designate your memory in certain of its aspects as you "forgetter." (1) I am reminded of this when I read these lines of yours in No, 714:
In answer to the direct question as to whether our "Western" friend had sent in any protest against my articles or those of Mr.. Baylor, I answer in the negative. If Mr. Walker had quoted the entire paragraph instead of the closing lines, our readers would probably be able to see why there was not protest against the non-personal methods adopted by mr. Baylor and myself.
The inference seemingly intended to be drawn from this is that our "Western" friend protested against an alleged "personal" method of discussion on my part. Here is where your "forgetter" got its work. The note from the "Western" friend was in my possession at the time you wrote the lines with which I am now dealing. You now have it and I must request you to print it in full. Our readers will then see that the correspondent made no complaint whatever regarding the style of my argument.. he simply criticized my position as a defender of intervention. As I wrote you privately when you objected to my quotation, there was not a semblance of "garbling" in my omission of the greater part of the note; I cited all that was pertinent to the matter then under consideration, that is, the closing of the discussion. When the note is printed it will be seen that the part not quoted by me had no relation to the part quoted, that is, it dealth not with methods, but with the main issue of war.
I submit that my original article was not personal in its methods, using the word "personal" in its proper sense. To be sure I criticized certain alleged "facts," and in doing so mentioned the sponspors for some of those "facts." (2) But since when has civilly pointing out the inconsistencies of a writer been considered offensively personal? It must be distinctly understood that the friends of intervention are justified in calling attention to the special reasons which sanction this war, and in doing so they must correct the misapprehensions of those who ignore these special reasons, and the misapprehensions most commonly take the from of erroneous statements concerning facts. You certainly do not expect us to enter a general denial of your affirmations regarding the miseries of war; we agree heartily with you that war should be avoided when such avoidance is possible without too great sacrifice of probable good. Then, our contention being that there are certain weighty special reasons that justify this war, we must decline to meet you on your chosen ground of discussion; we must persist in trying to correct you misapprehensions of facts, the facts that are, concretely, the especial reasons. If you say that this method of discussion is "personal," and is therefore to be shut out of Lucifer, well and good; yours is the final word, be we can ente r our protest in the court of fair play.
(3) Before closing, I wish to heartily thank you for inserting the rejoinder written by Mr. Baylor; his article as a whole, and especially the last paragraph, very strongly sustains all I have said regarding the character of the forces that are against interevention and are now sustaining Spain in her desperate effort to indefinitely continue the enslavement of her island colonies. Again I thank Mr. Baylor for his unexpected corroboration of my view of the struggle.
Peace is desireable if it is a condition precedent to something better than has been; not otherwise. As Harry Lyman Koopman well says in the lines you quote from him:
Peace is naught, save as it prepares
The whole round world a pathway for the mirth
And majesty that hasten to love's birth.
James Beeson, Hytop, Ala.---Editor Lucifer. Your late reference to the Civil War reminds me that there is one chapter of that lamentable struggle that no northen writer has had the honesty, and no southern man the courage, to pen down for the benefit of future generations. I mean "Sherman's march to the sea"---lauded by the historian and sung by the poet. In my pessimistic opinion, no one but a barbarian of the the lowest caste could see anything to praise in that march, more especially after the one-legged commander of the remnant of one of the armies of the then already lost cause gave Sherman the dodge and took his line of march through Alabama and Tennessee. Why didn't the much-praised Shaerman face about and follow the foolhardy HJood into Tennessee, hem him in between his own and General Thomas' army, and force him to surrender or be cut to pieces, and thus end the war six months sooner than it was ended? I suppose it would have come too near doing what his army was organized and equipped to do.
But what pen can describe the horrors of that march through Georgia and South Carolina? Imagine a large and well-equipped army marching through a country where there was nothing more dangerous to contend with than a fat hog or steer, spreading devastation, desolation and starcation over a territory seventy or eighty miles wide by hundreds in length. And then imagine you hear the cries and entreaties of age and infirmity, of women and children, pleading for their houses, their barns and fences to be spared that they might be able to peacefully cultivate the soila and earn a living. Now imagine you see the smoke of burning farm houses, fences, villages, towns and cities rising in every direction, while the people are left with one suit of clothes, to starve if they cannot get out of the wake of desolation, and you will no longer wonder why the same government blockades the starving Cubans, Sends its armies and navies to the other end of the world while the condition of Cuba was the pretence for the declaration of war.
