THE NOME DAILY NUGGET
GEO. S. MAYNARD. Editor
RUSSELL G MAYNARD, Manager.
Published every evening except Sunday by The Nome
Publishing Company, Nome, Alaska.
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ETHICS HAS NO PLACE IN MODERN WARFARE
If you will admit that it is at all possible to discuss
war in terms of morality, you can see that a neat little
ethical problem has been raised in wartorn Bilbao,
Spain.
Assuming that the news dispatches from that land
of military censorships and wholesale confusion were
Correct, the people of Bilbao seem to have executed—
if that is the word to use—some three-score prisoners
in retaliation for an aerial bombardment.
Bilbao was held by Loyalist forces. In the mili
tary dungeons of the city were several thousand Fas
cists who were held partly as prisoners of war and part
ly as hostages.
Out of the sky came eight Fascist bombing planes
They flew low over the city dropping bombs. The at
tack was kept up for two hours or more. It took the
lives of several hundred people, mostly noncombatants.
By and by the planes flew away. Then came re
prisals.
The citizens dragged 60 of their Fascist prisoners
out of the dungeons and killed them. One account says
that the luckless 60 were simply rounded up and spatt
ered with machine gun fire until all had died.
All this did little to bring back to life any of the
citizens who were killed in the bombardment. It did,
however, satisfy the surviving citizens’ thirst for re
venge.
Now the ethical problem comes in right here: Was
the unspeakable atrocity of the slaughter of the defen
seless prisoners any worse from a moral standpoint,
than the preceding slaughter of innocent citizens with
aerial bombs?
It has been several centuries since the “rules of
war” outlawed the killing of military prisoners. For
many generations, men of all nations have agreed that
the person of the prisoner of war is inviolate. He could
be locked up, half-starved, and driven to insanity by
sheer boredom, but the conscience of the race held that
his captors were at least obliged to keep him alive.
In Bilbao this rule went by the boards. Prisoners
were murdered in cold blood—and, in that act, a rever
sion to the babarism of the Dark Ages can be seen.
But there is the aerial bombardment to consider
too. Until two decades ago the race had also agreed
that armies do no make war on civilians. Women, child
ren old men and invalids have been safe from the sword
for centuries. It remained for the twentieth century to
take a leaf from the book of Genghis Khan and slaught
er helpless noncombatants.
Which, then, was morally the worse—the killing
of women and children with bombs, or the machine-gun
ning of helpless prisoners?
The question, of course, is foolish. There is no
“worse” in war. Ethics has no place in it. Anything
goes. The expression “civilized warfare” is the ghast
liest joke of modern times.
What happened in Bilbao is simply proof that mod
ern warfare unchains the brute which civilization had
kept bound for hundreds of years.—Exchange
THEY STILL BELITTLE OUR HELP IN WAR
It is just about 18 years since the World War end
ed, but our late beloved allies have not yet given up the
attempt to prove that we really weren’t nearly as much
help to them as we supposed at the time.
David Lloyd George, who was prime minister of
England when we went into the war, is still writing
memoirs and his most recent volume includes some
sharp criticism of Gen. John J. Pershing.
General Pershing has been criticized by allied
statesmen before now. He wasn’t quite the sort of
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thing they were looking for; he had a hard, square jaw,
and a mouth that could look like a slit in a sheet of arm
or plate. When they all rallied ’round and began telling
him how to run his part of the war, he had a remarkable
faculty for listening quietly and then saying “No in 1
a rock-ribbed eternal sort of way.
Lloyd George’s complaint is the same old one:
I that Pershing was as stubborn as a Missouri mule |
about the idea of keeping American troops under Am
erican command, and that, because of this fact, it took
the United States altogether too long to make its pres
ence felt on the firing line.
The Lloyd George idea had the beauty of simplic
ity. It was to feed the American troops right into the
British army by companies and battalions. There
would be no American army, as such, instead, there
would be a vast number of separate units brigaded into
the war-worn British divisions. As fast as our boys
got to France, they could be put to work.
The best mark on Pershing’s record is the fact that
he said “No” to this little scheme, and said it often.
The British high command had spent two mortal
| years butting its head into a stone wall. At the very
moment when it was asking Pershing to turn his Am- |
erican boys over to its tender mercies, it was wasting
400,000 lives in the mud-mired Passchendaele offensive
—a strategic gem for which British historians are still
! criticizing the high command in the bitterest terms.
Lloyd George himself did not quite trust the ;
British high command. He held British troops in Eng
land in such numbers that Earl Haig’s partisans blame
him for the German break-through of March, 1918;
held them there because he was sick of seeing the flow
er of the British army wasted in vain, uninspired at
tacks that were fore-doomed to failure.
And yet Lloyd George, now can criticize Pershing
for feeling precisely the same way.
He held out for the idea that if American boys had
to fight on a foreign battlefield, they would at least go
in under American direction, fighting for American
nhipptivps; —F.vrhancre.
^pcnritip<5 Art 800, or $368’000 if the le8islature
kJCLUI 1UC3 /id lowered the age limit on women,
I Evfllainpd Rv 'vould not 8reatly exceed that al
io LiXpidlllCu ready carried by the Territory.
Dele. Dimond A„other PTTZ <*.
- curity Act, the delegate explain.
(Continued From Page One) ed, was that which provides for;
pendent children, $90 000; relief annuities through payroll taxes j
of destitution, $50,000; needy and paid for by both employer and 1
indigent, $80,000, in addition to employee, which throughout the |
»
an appropriation for public heal, country will eventually take care
th, and $150,400 for the Pioneers’ of 25,000,000 wage earners thru
Home. an annuity of from $65 to $85 a
It was pointed (Jut that the month, depending upon age and
$200,000 a year old age allowance earnings and payments by the
would be applicable to the old workers. ,
age part of the Social Security A third feature provides for un
Act, and probably some addition- employment compensation the
al. The amount estimated, $371^- delegate explained, through a
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NOME LIQUOR STORE
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Between Pioneer Drug Store And Dream Theatre
Jack Solomon, Pron.
federal tax on payrolls. Any
state or Territory that enacts a
suitable law to provide for com
pensation of those unemployed
can draw down 90 per cent of the
tax which the federal govern
ment collects, plus an additional
amount up to 5 per cent required
for administrative purposes. The;
delegate pointed out the import,
ance of the legislature in enact, i
ing the proper legislation which'
will bring back 90 per cent or
more of this tax which otherwise 1
remains in the federal treasury.
Those Dependent
Assistance for the blind, de
pendent children, and additional
health service is available to the
Territory through the Social Se
curity Act, according to Delegate
Dimond, but the Territorial leg
islature must first pass the neces.
sary laws to make the Territory
eligible.
The delegate explained parts of
the act are now working in many
states. He quoted chairman of
the Social Security Board, John
G. Winant, three time Republican
governor of New Hampshire, as
saying that the act was “the most
humane document written into
law in this century.”
The importance of action on the
part of the Territorial legislature
in relation to the Social Security
Act, was stressed throughout Mr.
Dimond’s talk.
ALASKA WINTER IS
HARD ON DUCKS
JUNEAU—Wild duck “flyways"
0f Southeastern Alaska recently
lacked their usual great flocks
migrating from the lashing winds,
the snow and ice of the Arctic
slope.
Though winter lay upon the Far
Northern nesting and feeding
grounds, sportsmen farther south
eyed in vain the duck’s sky trails
and fav0rite resting places for
the big flocks. Ducks came in
scattered numbers, but not in the
rushing hordes that thrilled Alas
ka hunters a few years ago.
“They may come later,” said
the more optimistic.
But other sportsmen wondered
if the great flights were some,
thing 0f the past, due to decima.
tion from shooting and other
causes.
The Alaska Game Commission
concurred in the sportsmen’s ob
servations the ducks were scarce.
S0me sportsmen agitated for a
closed season next year in hopes
strict protection would solve the
problem.
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th, how many, and the Associa
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pamphlet form, for sale at The
Nugget Office, for 10 cents.
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