  Solemn Warnings—A Traitor can Never be Anything but Despicable—Examples of the Past. By Ben E. Rich. The traitor is the moral cannibal. He feasts on the mental worth, the social reputation, the political welfare and the earthly life of his trusting and betrayed friend. He is the human serpent, which nurses and revives at the fire of charity, and then darts his strengthened venom at the bosom of his benefactor. What the grub is to the heart of oak, the gnawing rat to the ship's timbers, the flaw to the diamond, the poisonous asp to the sheltering flower—all that, aye, and more, is the traitor to mankind. No cause is so sacred, no being is so exalted as to be free from the pollution of his betraying touch. Even the celestial legions had their archtraitor. Earth, from the day of Eden, has never been free from his treacherous kiss. Since the hour when man first learned to owe allegiance to his fellow-man, profane, rebellious betrayers have worked their insidious way, like devastating worms, through all the pillars upholding holy men and noble causes. The traitor is the worst of all thieves; for he steals sacred freedom from his trusting associates. The traitor is the worst of all murderers; for he plunges the assassin's knife into the back of his believing friend. Two soldiers are standing at the picket post—in the dark night, the silent forest. They are sworn and trusted comrades. The army of the foe surges around them; and they know that ghastly death is grinning at them from every glade which opens from the dark center to the blacker depths beyond, and whispering to them upon every wind that stirs the odorous branches. But they fear no blow from a foeman's shaft—that noble death is but the chance of war. Secure in mutual confidence, they tremble not. They speak of country, home; of wives and little, prattling babes. And yet, while the words of soft, pathetic love are on the lips of one, the other plunges a traitorous knife, hilt-deep, into a friendly, loyal heart. And then the assassin sweeps like the shadow of a lost soul over the face of the betrayed sentinel; he creeps across tender moss and between the trunks of mighty trees—everywhere leaving the crimson, accusing stain—until he reaches a distant campfire; and at the feet of the waiting enemy he lays down his reeking knife and takes his purse of gold. This is the traitor. And when the moon comes up, stealing amidst the rustling leaves, he looks upon the cold, white face of a betrayed friend, whose last word was of confident love told to the ear of a hired assassin. Two men are joined in a patriotic cause. To the maintenance of the principle of just freedom they pledge their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor. History will call the men who are true to this cause loyal and brave. The tyrant whom they seek to overthrow calls them conspirators. They meet in a darkened room, with curtains closely drawn. Soft mats hush the sound of the firm footfall. Stern voices, more used to the vast circumference of the field or the resonant heights of the forum, are stilled to a woman's whisper. These two men are meeting to sign and yield to each other, for distant comrades, the pledge of mutual fidelity. The one who is master of the house places his guest at a table and spreads before him for final execution the plans of insurrection, the lists of friends and confederates, the oaths of reciprocal fealty. As the visitor attaches his name to the solemn instruments, he sighs and says: "Oh, trusted friend! I yield to this cause not only my life, my fortune and my sacred honor; but I pledge to it and to the integrity of you and our allies my sweet wife and my only son—both at once my present pride and future joy!" While the words are uttered, the bold and noble hand traces its way in affirmatory signature across parchment and paper. Scarcely has the thrilling whisper of the patriot ceased to agitate the damask curtains, when the hangings are parted by the vulture hand of the other conspirator; and between their open folds steal the soldiers of the tyrant. These warlike hands grasp the shoulders of the patriot; and as they drag him forth to dungeon and to death, the betraying host cries: "Bind him fast, lest he should escape and slay me!" The coward, muffled in a cloak, soon steals from the sombre chamber to the palace of the minister and lays before that waiting officer his trophies of broken plans and fatal lists. He gets in return his patent of rank, his gift of confiscated estates, his pledge of his personal security. This is the traitor. And when the sun of the third day shall rise, its first pitying beams will fall upon the gory block, the black executioner, the basket with its dread burden, and the headless trunk of the patriot whose trust and hope had been in a false friend. * * * * * Two men are joined with others in proclaiming an unpopular but holy doctrine. Hand in hand they go through the earth testifying to men, to cities, to nations, the mighty truths. They say to all lands and to all peoples: "We know that this is the living, burning truth. God has spoken from the heavens, and we are His witnesses." To each other—in all the sacred friendliness of long association, of missionary labor, and of a communion together when every human law and hand seemed against them—they speak in faithful hope of the glorious cause which they espouse, and of the divine necessity which they are under to be faithful to God and their brethren. Their views are not in accord with public sentiment and suddenly they are dragged before a cruel tribunal and charged that they are teaching crime. But the law of the land says: "No man shall be punished because of his sincere religious views or practices." And the judge before whom they are arraigned calls to them: "Continue to declare that ye are doing the will of God, and in prison ye shall rest. But acknowledge that ye are proclaiming a man-made system, and pledge that ye will cease, and ye shall go free." And one of them who are arraigned says: "Oh, judge! I acknowledge thy supremacy. I will obey thy law. I will not advise others to break it. So long as thou and thy masters shall command, I will worship the graven image." And then he takes his seal of amnesty, bought at the price of a people's freedom, and creeps from the presence of the court a man—nay, a creature—inviolable of his fellows, but haunted ever by the shadow of Judas. This is the traitor. And when the other prisoner is arraigned he cries: "This is my religion! God gave it to me! Ye may take my earthly life, but ye cannot sap my manhood nor strangle my conscience." Then the judge, who has a mission to learn if these people are sincere, answers to the prisoner and for the far-off masters of the court: "Thou canst not come within the law; because thou canst not claim sincerity. Thy brother and fellow-laborer hath just now recanted, and this is proof that thou art not sincere, but wickedly obstinate. If thy brother had with thee remained firm and immovable I might have believed in thy cause. But what man hath done man can do again. Therefore, recant or rest thou within the cold and lonely walls." And the sun and moon of another month, stealing through iron-bound chinks of rock, see the patriot pacing a dismal cell. The traitor calls himself a reformer. He is merely a coward. And of all the wretches whose presence taints the air of earth and heaven, the coward is the worst. Great Caesar said: "The coward's fears make him die many times before his death. "The valiant never taste of death but once, "Of all the wonders that I yet have heard, it seems to me most strange that men should fear seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come." The traitor professes to believe that his act of betrayal will disrupt the cause which he deserts. This is the coward rebel's wish. How abjectly and miserably he fails! Sometimes the traitor lops from the sturdy trunk a straggling branch; but does the tree thrive less for that? Nay. The other twigs only bear blossoms the more redolent and fruit the more rosy. Sometimes the traitor tears away a cracked, a seamed, a shaling stone from the half-completed structure. What if a measure of disaster follow? Cannot the builder renew? And does he not choose better rock to bear the weight of his fair edifice? Sometimes the traitor only hastens the success which he seeks to avert; sometimes he delays the triumph against which he rebels. But always ultimately the car of destiny moves to its appointed end. And the cowardly betrayer who thought to stop its career by holding back with his puny arms is dragged by it to his miserable end, while his associates—dead or alive go with it to the day of triumph. * * * * * There was once a man of mighty prowess, endowed from his first breath with a wondrous strength. When he grew to manhood, brutes, men and even armies fell in the dust at his feet. It had been divinely promised of him that he should be a marvel of strength, and that he should begin to deliver Israel out of the hands of the Philistines, and men and chains, and bolts and gates could not prevail against his manly, heroic lustiness. But there came a woman, with her soft, betraying touch. She caressed him and begged for love of her that he would reveal the secret of his miraculous strength. In a foolish moment he yielded; and then were his Jove-like locks shorn from his head; and he became a blind lackey, the serf of the Philistines. Delilah, the betrayer, with her traitorous kiss upon Samson's lips, and her traitorous whisper through the tent to his waiting enemy, could do what no thousand of open foes could accomplish. She made the proud, superb, perfect lion a weak, whining whelp. * * * * * A mighty king had a well-beloved son to whom he had given and forgiven more than is usually bestowed upon one of human kind. And yet the son traitorously plotted the downfall and even the murder of his royal sire, and the usurpation of the throne. He might have succeeded in his cruel, parricidal treason, but that he himself was in turn betrayed and finally slain. And when the grand, great-hearted, poetic monarch learned that Absalom, the sweet, the beautiful, the dearly-beloved, was dead, he wept before all Israel, and as he went his sorrowful way thus he said: "O, my son Absalom! My son, my son Absalom! Would God I had died for thee, O, Absalom, my son, my son!" If that arrow-pierced heart of the betraying and betrayed Absalom could have quickened but for one moment, how much sharper than the physical death-thrust would it have felt King David's cry of infinite forgiveness! But the past was irrevocable. Israel's lordly king, the beloved of God, was moaning in anguish at the gate of the city; and the beautiful Absalom, with the fatal hair, the beloved of his royal sire, was lying dead in the pit in the deserted wood, with ignoble stone crushing his lifeless body. War, murder, exile were powerless to bring such desolation to these royal hearts; but when Absalom, the forgiven murderer, became a betrayer infinite woe fell around the name of the dead prince and the bowed head of the living king. But though the great tenderness of the psalmist could compass remission for the crime of Absalom, the nation and history must be more harsh. When a subject, for self-agrandizement, rises against a king, he is a traitor; but he is a thrice-damned traitor when that monarch against whom he rebels is his own father. * * * * * Women are often false to their lovers; subjects to their sovereigns, and even sons to their sires. Divinity itself is no invulnerable shield against betrayal. A merciful Christ came to save mankind from torment and lift them into eternal radiance. He chose and trusted His apostles. He ministered to them and with them. They each could give a testimony that their Master was the anointed Savior, the Son of the living God. Persecution came upon Him like the storm cloud lowers upon the snowy mountain and enfolded Him in a gloomy embrace. The prospect of suffering with this God-like Master, whom he had served as purse-bearer when the danger was not great, made Judas weak unto betrayal. Cowardice and avarice worked together in the traitor heart. He kissed and cried: "Master, master! Hail, master!" Then he took his thirty pieces of silver; and with them he accepted a hatred of all mankind. The compassionate Redeemer of the world hung upon the cruel cross with drops of agony upon His radiant brow, while his lips were wreathed in a pained but forgiving smile. And Judas, the traitor, already tasting the infernal torments, called in vain to stay the progress of his dread act. The black-hearted deed was done. The mocking trial had passed, sentence had been pronounced and executed; and then the betrayer groaned and flung the money from him as a sinful, burning thing which had no worth. Upon the bloody field he cast himself and his bowels gushed forth in useless contrition. He died upon the spot which his blood-money purchased for the burial of strangers and criminals in the land. * * * * * A brilliant general fell into disgrace with his military superiors and with the civil government of his country. He was impetuous and impatient of restraint. He was proud even to arrogance; he was extravagant even to the furthest limit of honesty. Other men had been advanced to higher posts—he felt himself degraded. His disbursements upon one of his heroic expeditions were still unsettled—he felt himself defrauded. A tyrant foe invested his country and sought to subjugate her people. He listened to the voice of ignoble avarice, of proud passion, of offended arrogance. With deliberate humiliation he sought a place of vast trust among the defenders of his country. He was appointed to the command of a great river fortress—the key to the interior, the storage house of munitions dearly bought, highly prized and absolutely necessary for the repulse of the invaders. He sold his rank, his honor and his interest in his native land. Just at the hour when his bargain was to be decided, his old friend and admirer, the noble commander-in-chief, said to him: "My dear Arnold, I am now forming my army for active operations in the field. I want a fighting general. Come, I offer you the command of the left wing, at once the post of danger and of honor." The traitor's face flushed with shame. He pleaded an old wound as reason why he should not go into the battle-field. Then he went to meet Andre and give the last assurance to his British masters that he was theirs, body and soul. By the interposition of America's sublime destiny his plot was discovered and foiled. Arnold, the traitor, crept away to escape a betrayer's death. He received his British uniform, his British gold, his British sword. He even came back with his mercenary horde to ravage, burn, destroy the little town in Connecticut where first he saw the light. Years later, the great Frenchman, Talleyrand, met a distinguished-looking man at an English country inn. The two gentlemen were total strangers to each other; but they soon engaged in conversation upon the great question of Democracy. When they were about to part, Talleyrand said to his companion: "From your knowledge of all that relates to the United States, I am sure that you must be an American; my name is Talleyrand, and I am about to visit that country; perhaps you will be kind enough to give me letters of introduction to some of your friends there." When the illustrious diplomat had finished his request, the other gentleman bowed low; and when he looked up his face, even to his lips, was gray as ashes. In a voice which sounded weird and cheerless as the moan of a November wind across a deserted marsh, he answered: "Yes, I am an American. I was born in America. I have spent nearly all my life there. But I am probably the only American living who can say, 'I have not one friend in my native land.' No, not one. Sir, I am Benedict Arnold." Talleyrand turned away from Arnold with a shudder, while the miserable traitor crept silently from the room. When the unhappy wretch was dying in the midst of contempt and poverty he grew delirious. At the last moment of his ruined life he called to the devoted wife who had been the sharer of all his woe: "Bring to me, I beg you, the epaulettes and sword knots which Washington gave me. Let me die in my old American uniform, the uniform in which I fought my battles. May my God forgive me for ever having worn any other!" * * * * * The greatest army which the world ever saw was gathered at Thermopylae more than two thousand years ago. This was the Persian host assembled to do battle to the little band of Spartans. So intrepidly did the Greeks defend that sacred defile which gave entrance to their beloved land that Xerxes became out of all hope of forcing his way through the Spartan ranks. This was the moment for the traitor. Before the proud Xerxes could withdraw his myriads, the betrayer came—a Greek, a native of the sublime country. With servile words he flung himself at the feet of the gorgeous Persian. He offered to lead the invaders to an eminence overlooking the heroic defenders of Greece. His coward wish was granted; and when the next morning dawned Leonidas and his followers saw the spears and helmets of their foes flashing at them from the heights. The rest is the most sublime tragedy of profane history. And the traitor who betrayed the noblest souls of Greece to their death received his gold and precious stones. He might have died in the honest obscurity in which he was born and reared, but for his coward act. Ah! such notoriety is purchased at too high a price. It would be better for a man to stand modestly and firmly before his country's foe; to fall unrecognized and without praise; to fill a grave over which the words shall stand cut into ineffaceable granite, "An unknown soldier, who died in defense of his country." Ah, yes! far better thus to fall and fill an unknown grave—to be unremembered forevermore of men—than to win a name of infamy, to fill the pages of history and be recollected of all human-kind while men shall hate a traitor. * * * * * A prophet of Almighty God came in the full sunlight of this great nineteenth century to lead men back to the glory of their Creator. His open enemies sought his life; but for years their murderous effort was in vain. He continued his sacred ministry upon the earth, with a power which was divine, until the hour for the traitorous kiss. When Bennett sinned and then through hate betrayed, the shadows of martyrdom began closing around our grand Prophet and Patriarch. When the Laws and the Higbees, the Fosters and the Cowles, became traitors and gave their efforts to aid the assassin persecutors of their sworn brother and leader; then, indeed, was the fate of Joseph and Hyrum sealed. A governor of a sovereign State betrayed them to a cruel death; and Carthage repeated the divine tragedy of Calvary. The Prophet and Patriarch have passed to their glorious immortality; their names shall fill a thousand hymns of praise on earth and welcome in the heavens. But the traitors—miserable reptiles—will be scorned through countless ages. It is always the same—prince or peasant, apostle or soldier—if a man be a traitor he is remembered for that and nothing more. If his station be lowly, he will seek in vain to hide his shame in his native obscurity; for it will burst forth in lurid, bloody letters to the sight of all the ages that shall come. If his station be exalted he may try and try again, but vainly, to cover his treason with the glory of his rank or wealth; for it will blacken all his brilliance and leave his place a plague spot; his fame, a grinning skeleton of dead despair; his career, an undying infamy. But whatever may be the varied circumstances and results attending the wretched lives of traitors, there is this lesson which all humanity may draw: Successful or unsuccessful in their treason, betrayers are always execrated; successful or unsuccessful in their treason, they always live long enough to repent; successful or unsuccessful in their treason, they may never in this life know a waking moment when their own coward fears do not make them doubt the fidelity of every soul about them; successful or unsuccessful in their earthly treason, when they shall stand in that other world face to face with their betrayed friends, they will know that the blackest of all offenders are cowardly, assassin traitors. At that great day Judas Iscariot will not be the only traitor to cry: "It had been good for me that I had not been born!" Every crisis at every period and with every nation exposes traitors just as it exalts to view patriots. This Church has seen at every critical point of its career, the betrayer as well as the savior springing to the front. The present emergency with the people of Utah is no exception to this rule. Just as there are men sacrificing comfort and earthly prosperity to the cause, and men who are willing to give life itself to defend God's work from the attacks of its enemies; so there are people who will sell their own sacred heritage and the freedom of the community, for wealth, popularity or personal safety. And more than this—the people are surrounded by men placed here to represent the government who are false to every trust, and whose opposition can be estimated in dollars or coerced by bigotry. We have some traitors to ourselves within our homes; we have more traitors to truth and justice outside our walls. Less than two thousand years ago the great Roman republic was at the zenith of its power. Some of the free and enterprising citizens of that mighty land emigrated into the cold, mountainous regions of the north and established a colony which they called Beville. They set up the Roman standard, and claimed the territory in the name of their country. After overcoming untold difficulties, they sent messengers to Rome asking for recognition; and saying that, inasmuch as they had given a grand, rich domain to their beloved mother land, they should be placed upon an equal footing with their free-born fellow-citizens. But the politicians at Rome would not listen to this request; and Beville was kept in the vassalage of a conquered province. All the governors, judges and many of the local officers were sent from some other part of the republic; and they treated the people of Beville with the most dreadful severity, while they dispatched to Rome the most vicious and cruelly false reports concerning the honest citizens of the province or colony unto which they had been sent to govern and to judge. Many of them were most contemptible knaves and traitors. They once had a governor who traitorously violated his oath to give a certificate of election to a man who had one vote in a dozen, and whose only claim to consideration was his wealth and willingness to make loans on desperate political titles; a governor who deprived a good public unsectarian university of its needed support and then declared that the people of Beville opposed education; a governor who broke his plighted word in order that he might leave upon the fair land the espionage of an unjust and unaccountable commission; a governor who basely betrayed the consul that maintained him in office by saying with egotism which is bleached white with concentrated lye: "I wrote all of such and such portions of the consul's message;" a governor who was called a thief upon the floor of the Senate; a governor who had a list of wildcat, highway-robbery mining stocks which bore his name and title—all for sale under the glare and glamor of his civil position; a governor whose brains were rattling chestnuts, whose heart was infinitesimal, bearing proof that a single atom can exist, and whose beauty—his only virtue—was that of the painted harlot and the whitened sepulchre. Then they had one judge, a man who should now be where Deacon Bitters was supposed to be years ago—measuring sulphur to make orthodox hell fire; a judge whose class-meeting morality was so dreadfully shocked by an advocate's grand conduct that the advocate was disbarred from practice because he refused to cast off and make a wanderer of the wife who had loved and honored him, and who had borne him sweet, confiding children; a judge who could then send lechers forth from his court crowned with bay and laurel and bearing their edicts of license in their hands; a judge who practically said to the libertine, "Go your way rejoicing. Prey upon virtue without stint. Bring ruin into your own home, and then spread disease and deadly desolation wherever else you can gain an entrance. You are free to come and go. My thunderbolts of justice, forged at the fire of fanaticism and fanned by the wind of protection for my own son, all these shafts are for our over-scrupulous opponents, the people of Beville;" a judge whose brain was honeycombed with the devious turnings of treacherous thoughts, whose heart was an icicle, and whose alleged moral desire—his only virtue—was the great enfolding cloak which could cover every prostitute and paramour in the land. * * * * * They had another judge: a creature whose miserable physical appearance was but the photograph of the horrid, ugly soul within; a judge who was willing to slay women and children, and to tread over their corpses to gain his nomination; a judge who became known within one brief year as an infamous wretch, who practiced cruelty with most Satanic ingenuity; a judge whose brain was a tape-worm lie, with five hundred self-sustaining and specie-propagating joints. Whose heart was a pain in his stomach caused by a vacuum, and whose ability to sermonize, his only virtue, was an adulterous union of vanity and falsehood. * * * * * These men were all traitors—traitors to God, to their country and to the parents who vainly tried to endow them with manhood. But to-day we in Utah have a few traitors a little nearer home. There are men who say: "I once loved the cause well enough to die for it; but now I hate the work and the people, because a leading man once did me an injury. I will become an informer." There are still others—the careless traitors—the men and women who cover their thoughtless treason with a joke, and clothe unmeant betrayal with a smile. These are the people who learn the sacred secrets of a friend, a brother, and then tattle the forbidden words here, there and everywhere. And when the careless gossip reaches the ears of our persecutors—as it does all too often—it becomes, not friendly joking, but a stern, almost tragic accusation. And when the victim is brought to sad disaster, the very people who have helped the wicked betrayal are among the first to say: "I am not surprised that he should come to grief; he is so careless. The great wonder is that it did not happen before, because everybody has been talking about his affairs." Ah! to-day we see Delilah who betrays her husband; and Absalom, who is traitorous to his father; and Judas, who is traitorous to his father; and Judas, who would betray his master for gold or popular approval; the Arnold who says, "It is a losing cause, and I may as well desert while there is yet time." Yes, there are cowards and traitors in the land. Well, let there be, then, since such are necessary to make the sum of human existence—let them live as hyenas do. Grand Harry the V., of England—superb, glorious Harry—stood once upon the shore of France with his little band of soldiers to face the countless legions of his hereditary foe. He heard a murmur as of fear; and turning to his nobles he looked at them from flashing eyes and spoke these very significant words:
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