Home Page 1

Reference URL

Add tags

Comment

Rate

Save to favorites

To link to the entire object, paste this link in email, IM or document

To embed the entire object, paste this HTML in website

To link to this page, paste this link in email, IM or document

To embed this page, paste this HTML in website

Disquisition by Scripps, E.W., How things change!, May 26, 1909

Page 1

Save page

1 of 7

View Description

View PDF & Text

Download

small (250x250 max)

medium (500x500 max)

large ( > 500x500)

Full Resolution

All (PDF)

This page

All

Subset

PDF
Text

Text Search...

you wish to report:

Your comment:

Your Name:

Submit

Cancel

...

Rating
Title	Disquisition by Scripps, E.W., How things change !, May 26, 1909
Collection	E. W. Scripps Papers, 1868-1926
Creator/Author	Scripps, E. W. (Edward Willis), 1854-1926
Date Original	1909-05-26
Subject-Place	England -- Economic conditions Germany -- Economic conditions United States -- Economic conditions Russia -- Economic conditions
Subject-LCSH	Navies Agriculture World politics International relations
Is Part Of	E. W. Scripps Papers, Series 4, Box 01, Vol 02 E. W. Scripps' Writings 1909, Book 2
Collection finding aid	http://www.library.ohiou.edu/archives/mss/mss117.html
Call Number	mss117/ser4/box01/book02/175-181
Original Format-AAT	Essays
Publisher	Ohio University Libraries. Mahn Center for Archives and Special Collections
Type	Text
Format [IMT]	Application/pdf
Physical dimensions	7 p.; 11 x 8.5
Identifier	ser4_box01_vol02_175-181_how_things.pdf
Donor	Scripps, Charles E. (Charles Edward), 1920-
Rights Information	In the public domain. Unpublished works are under copyright for the life of the author + 70 years
Citation	E.W. Scripps Papers, Mahn Center for Archives & Special Collections, Ohio University Libraries
Transcript	Ohio University Libraries, E.W. Scripps Papers, MSS 117, Series 4, http://media.library.ohiou.edu/scripps May 26 1 1909. HOW THINGS CHANGE ~ -------------------- In 1870 I was a sixteen year old boy on the far-m. The first time that I can remember when I was interested in the news of the daily ~ papers and other periodical s was at the time of the breaking out of the Franco-Prussian war. I know that I' must at that time have had some little acquaintance with the geography and history of modern nations, for I recall that I was an anti-Napoleonist and that I regarded the French as a great and powerful nation and that I considered Germany her inferior. I recall that my sympathies were at first with the Gennana and that this sympathy was based solely upon my considering them the "under dog" in the fight. Up to the event of this war I believe that the commonly accepted idea was that France was the superior military nation of the world; if she had a rival at all her equal I believe it would have been considered England.. I remember too that I had been taught in my school books that Russia was a semi-barbarous nation. Of course I, in common with all other American boys I believed that the United States of America could, if it wanted to, lick any nation in the world. In those days Japan was considered no more of a world power, or of having any such possibilities, than Persia, for instance. All of this was less than forty years ago. From those days Germany began to loom up. I do recall something earlier than the Franco-Prussian war; I remember reading about Garibaldi, and especially of seeipg pictures of him in his red shirt. So it seems that even my memory covers the whole period of existence of the Italian nation. While Germany and France had places in my mind as being great How Things Cha:nge--2. military nations the United Kingdom of Great Britian loomed an enormous figure of a nation, on account of her great wealth and her superior position as a. manufacturing and trading nation, and largely also on account of her great commercial navy. England was the bug-a.-boo of the pea... pIe of the United States; and it seems like only a few days ago when John Sherman made himself glorious in the eyes of his countrymen by his habit of twisting the British lion t s tail. In those days the United States was considered~ and was prac-tically » only a nation of agriculturalists; the manufactures of this country were insign.i fi cant ; we got money from England to build our railroads, and we got the old fashioned iron rails for these railroads from England. The United States· foreign trade consisted of outward shipments of ~ricultural products and other raw material; and its in-ward shipments of manufactured stuff. We almost felt tJhat welivsre ovmed by our English creditors. Germany's manufactures and trade were also small. For a long Jleriod of time J in fact up to only fllTS or six years ago, I believe the Hapsburg limpire Ylas considered to be a mere bundle of sticks held together by an old and rotten withe--the very aged emperor, Francis Joseph. Not infrequently there appeared in mag-azines artieles seriously written by supposedly very intelligent publicist5 on the comil~ break-up of the Austri~~ Empire; in these articles was depicted a most discour~ing condition of government. The nation was com.posed, it is said, of some twenty-four different nationalities, each of which was a faction warring against all the others. Hungary, t,he ao-far dominant party in the dual ~onarchy J it is said, was aching for freedom from the yoke. Pan-Germanism was rampant and it is said that the present German emperor was only waiting for the death of his aged kinsman in order to proceed to annex not only all of the two Austrias t the more eastern provinces of the Balkans, in order to push his How Things Change--3. :frontier down to the Mediterranean and make Salonica. a Gennan port. NoVi Austria appears on the scene as almost the equal partner of her great ally, Germany I a.nd as a mil i tary power equal to if not superior to any other European nation except the German empire. The Gennan-Austrian alliance (Italy is supposed to be J if not detached from the triple alliance, at least unnecessa.!"IJ to it,) threatens Europe and beyond all question of doubt, today dominates it. It 'was only eleven years ago. at the breaking out of the Spanish-American war, that I was talking with a young officer, at my club, about the pro~pects of the war; he was as confident of our ultimate success as were the rest of the American people J but he bemoaned the condi tion of our navy I. even as compared with that of Spain. He said it was an outrage that the American people had. so neglected their navy -that it was only a poor sixth amongst the navies of the world.. It was only two or three years ago that, owing to the naval program of the Uni ted States J it turned out that the American Navy was the second in the world. I am not sure that it is still holding on, by its eye broVls, to this pOBi tion. But the Germans a.re forging ahead with such rapidity, while our ovm Government is so conservative, that it seems quite probable that in a few brief years the German navy will far outmatch our own. For some time there have been appearing in inglish magazines articles by Ellis Barker, a. man who se8ms to be both an e+pert on national finances and naval matters, warning the Englis..~ people t.hat it will not only be impossible for the Englis..~ nation to longer maintain what is called the two-power navy, but that it will be impossible for the English tax payers to keep up such a navy... building program as to pre-vent the Germans from very shortly over-mata..hing her alone with a navy. He explained that while the &tglia.~ tax pa.yer was already paying a per t77 Ho-vv Things Change- -4. capita tax far greater than t7e Gennan tax payer $ the former is constantly losing his wealth a."1Jrhence his capacity to pay taxes; while the latter has not yet begun to pay taxes up to one-half of his ability while he is grovling richer by leaps and bounds. It seems to be only a question now of a short time when the Gemana alone 1 or at least Germa.-;:1.y and Austria, will have a land army ~reater and more efficient than that possessed by any possible combination of nations that may be made against them, and a navy that would only have to fear the coalition of two or three of the other greatest naval powers in the world. Of Japan's startling rise to the position of a world power it is unnecessary to spea.1c further. The United States has taken Englandts place as the wealthiest nation in the world; it has also taken its place as the nation ',dth the greatest trade and manufacture; and t as has been said before, it has attained the second position as a world naval power. The only possi-ble rival of Gennany for the future on the seas, as it appears now, will be the United States; we alone amongst the nations are weal thy enough to out-build, in ships, Germany» as is Genna'YlY able to out-build England. While it mav be conceded that it takes time to build navies '" and train officers~~d men to handle them, still the history of the past ten years has shown that the race for naval supremacy may be easily won by the nation with the longest purse. There is only one thing tllat may cause the United States to become the greatest nation on earth, includil1g a greater population than any other nation and a far greater area of terri tory: ill that is necessarY,to acoomplish this is that Germany a"'1.all not move too swiftly I.or that England shall keep up the struggle for parity long enough. in. rder that when the time comes that Germany shall completely over-match How Things Change--5. the power of the BTi ton---a power that national stupidity cripples by the continuation of its obsolete, impractical, non-imperial organization,--~ then the American nation will be in a position to take over to itself not alone hegemony of Anglo-Saxondom, but, through annexation, the majority if not all of what was once tee British &pira. Either the Anglo.. Saxon of the United States must make himself forcibly the heir of the Briton or else see his patrimony filched by the Tauton. The time has not yet come when the Briton at home or in the coloni.es is able to conceive of such a condition. nor does it appear that any American statesma.'I1 has taken a serious view af an early impendil~ event. There is only at present existing one sign that Anglo-Saxon statesmen are comparatively sane: It is now considered in Wa~hington and in the principal capital s that warfare or even serious differences bet'vVeen the two great Anglo-Saxon peaI)l ss are not to be thought of. Perhaps it requires only the growing significance of the increase of the German nation' s military power in order to make the Balkan people !nore active and the people of the British Empire more disposed to rely on the eldest child of the nation. It is only a few years ago when, whatever the opinion was in the chancellories of Europe, the great mass of the people of all oi vilized nations regarded Russia as the one great pow'ar to be feared; it was this fear and hence hatred of Russia that caused Jmerican people to so sympathize with Japan. We wanted Japan to curb Russia) but it never entered our heads,---or the heads of but few of us and I was not one of thes6;---that a Japanese victory would produce for the American people an enemy far more to be dreaded than ever Russia could have be... come. Poor Russia.! 1y prostrated At the present moment she seems to be cop~lete- How Things Change--6. Every year sees France growil~ rapidly weaker, relative to Germany. There are today five powers that may be considered great; they are Genna..'1Y, Austria. England, United States and Japan. Germany and Japan are rising rapidly; England is decadent; whether the United States is to be a great military nation or not is still to be learned by events. But it seems inevitable that the United States nnlst be a great military nation, and perhaps, for a time the greatest. It would seem that even in these brief forty years covered by my memory there has been a whole chapter of the rise and fall of nations. The prick of the little brown manta bayonet exploded the bladder of Russian prestige. It is presmned that England has far more prestige now, even, than virtue. One blow at the heart of England, that might be easily struck in the next five or ten years, would burst the English bladder. There might well occur still such a catastrophe in the land of the Hapsburgs as would reduce that whole empire within a generation to a worse state, comparatively! than has Turkey been reduced during the reign of Abdul Hamid. Russia is impregnable • The vast area of her territory, popu-. lated by a race that breeds doubly as rapidly as a~y other white people, giyes her a. unique POSl tion. ! shari generation of good luck or good statesmanship may see her rise to a position for superior in Europe to what it was even supposed to be a decade ago. They say tha.t China is awakening. If Japan has done what She has done why can not China do still more? Historical events come quickly in these latter days; their pace may be even enormously accelerated, so that changes of the forty years past may be more than matohed by the changes of the next twenty i80 How Things Change--7. years. One thing is quite probable; I believe, and that is that my children will look out on avery t very different world than that I have seen, or even than that which I am nOvi i~ining. It may well be that forty years hence there will be but one great Anglo-Saxon nat.ion; that a single German power may rule all of western Europe, and that Russia will divide Europe with its Genmul gover:'lmsnt and Asia with one or more governments of Asiatic peoples, and that all of the world will practically be divided between four governments. The territory of the world and the people of the world may be either directly and completely absorbed and governed by the several nation~ or parts may be in a condition which is now called "spheres of influence" is Dictated by E. W. Scripps Miramar, California, May 26, 1909$ 'l8:l

Title	Page 1
Collection finding aid	http://www.library.ohiou.edu/archives/mss/mss117.html
Transcript	Ohio University Libraries, E.W. Scripps Papers, MSS 117, Series 4, http://media.library.ohiou.edu/scripps May 26 1 1909. HOW THINGS CHANGE ~ -------------------- In 1870 I was a sixteen year old boy on the far-m. The first time that I can remember when I was interested in the news of the daily ~ papers and other periodical s was at the time of the breaking out of the Franco-Prussian war. I know that I' must at that time have had some little acquaintance with the geography and history of modern nations, for I recall that I was an anti-Napoleonist and that I regarded the French as a great and powerful nation and that I considered Germany her inferior. I recall that my sympathies were at first with the Gennana and that this sympathy was based solely upon my considering them the "under dog" in the fight. Up to the event of this war I believe that the commonly accepted idea was that France was the superior military nation of the world; if she had a rival at all her equal I believe it would have been considered England.. I remember too that I had been taught in my school books that Russia was a semi-barbarous nation. Of course I, in common with all other American boys I believed that the United States of America could, if it wanted to, lick any nation in the world. In those days Japan was considered no more of a world power, or of having any such possibilities, than Persia, for instance. All of this was less than forty years ago. From those days Germany began to loom up. I do recall something earlier than the Franco-Prussian war; I remember reading about Garibaldi, and especially of seeipg pictures of him in his red shirt. So it seems that even my memory covers the whole period of existence of the Italian nation. While Germany and France had places in my mind as being great

Find results with:

Searching collections:

Home Page 1

Disquisition by Scripps, E.W., How things change!, May 26, 1909

Object Description

Description

Tags

Comments

Disquisition by Scripps, E.W., How things change!, May 26,...

Disquisition by Scripps, E.W., How things change!, May 26,...

	All
	Pages Enter page numbers or page ranges separated by commas. For example: 1,3,5-12