“O great corrector of enormous times,
Shaker of o’er-rank states, thou grand decider
Of dusty and old titles, that healest with blood
The earth when it is sick, and curest the world
O’ the pleurisy of people!”

Beaumont and Fletcher.

I.Introduction

In ChapterXVI constructive editorials were discussed. The object of this chapter is to present a few exercises on destructive editorials. Their object, of course, is not really to create ruin; it is merely to clear away rubbish in order to prepare the ground for the edifice of truth.

II.Assignment

Write an editorial in reply to an editorial in which a false position is assumed by the writer.

III.ModelI

Vice-President Marshall’s declaration, made some time ago at Wabash College, that the old man is being shoved off the stage everywhere, needs revision, as does the opinion of another statesman that men over fifty are atrophied.

In the last great war between France and Germany the campaign was planned and led by elderly men. The Emperor William, then King of Prussia, was in his seventy-fourth year; Von Moltke, the master strategist of the war, was seventy-one years old; General von Roon was sixty-eight; and Bismarck, the master mind in the larger field, was in his fifty-sixth year.

In the next great war in which high military efficiency was displayed, Admiral Togo was approaching his sixtieth year when he took the field; Prince Oyama, the commander-in-chief of the Japanese forces in Manchuria, had passed his sixtieth year; Field Marshal Nodzu was sixty-three; Field Marshal Yamagata was sixty-six; General Kuroki was sixty; and General Nogi, who took Port Arthur after a series of desperate conflicts, carried on with unflinching energy and almost breathless rapidity, was nearly sixty years of age.

In the present war Lord Kitchener, the organizing genius of the English army, is sixty-four; and Sir John French, commanding the English forces in the field, is sixty-two. When Lord Roberts was sent to South Africa to snatch victory out of defeat, he was sixty-eight years of age.

On the French side, General Joffre is sixty-two; General Pau is sixty-six; General Castelnau, the third in command, is well advanced in the sixties; and General Gallieni, who is in command of the defenses of Paris, is seventy.

The German armies are also led by a group of elderly men. Count von Huelsenberg has reached the mature age of seventy-eight; Field Marshal von der Goltz is seventy-one; General von Kluck has reached his sixty-eighth year; General von Emmich was sixty-six; and General von Hindenberg is sixty-seven.

These figures suggest that, while fifty may be the deadline among Democratic statesmen, it appears to be a kind of life-line among great leaders abroad.—Adapted from The Outlook, November11, 1914.13

IV.Analysis

Observe the framework. Paragraph1 states the point to be proved. Paragraphs 2–5 are composed of examples, arranged thus:

1. The War of 1871.
2. The War of 1905.
3. The Present War.
   1. France.
   2. England.
   3. Germany.

The order, in other words, is at once the order of chronology and that of climax, which combine to make the facts easy to remember. Paragraph6 summarizes the argument and clinches it by a sharp antithesis.

V.Exercises

1. Using a similar framework, write an editorial disproving by examples the point made by the writer of the model.
2. Write an editorial proving by examples any proposition which you believe to be true and in which you are deeply interested.
3. Prove or disprove by example any one of the following propositions:
   1. Left-hand batters are better than right-hand batters.
   2. Germans are better ball-players than Irishmen.
   3. Frenchmen cannot play ball.
   4. Men write better than women.
   5. Asphalt pavements are more durable than brick pavements.
   6. Germany has contributed more to the world’s culture than England.
   7. College graduates are more successful as statesmen than are self-made men.
   8. Very tall men have ever very empty heads.
   9. Athletes usually succeed well in after life.
   10. Dr. Samuel Johnson was a great wit. (For Johnson, substitute, if you wish, Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, Francis Bacon, Samuel Butler, Alexander Pope, Charles Lamb, Sidney Smith, Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell, or Mark Twain.)

In the model there are twenty-two examples. In your composition there must be at least ten.

VI.ModelII

WHAT DOES A MAN PRODUCE?

Among the banners of the unemployed in New York when they came in collision with the police was one reading, “We Want All We Produce.”

There is a common impression among Socialistic workmen, encouraged by some of the new-fangled college professors, that the weaver produces all the cloth that comes off the loom he tends, and he is robbed if his wages are only a part of the value of the cloth. But he is only one of a long line of producers, each of whom has to get some of the money for which that cloth is sold.

There was a farmer who grew the raw fiber. There was a railroad that transported the fiber. There was a long list of workmen who did various things in the preparation of that fiber. It took several classes of men to convert that fiber into yarn. Some men dug the coal and a railroad hauled it. It took a good many men a considerable time to build the loom and the engine and the mill, and all of them have got to be paid. The men who have paid all these previous classes of workers may reimburse themselves out of a part of the proceeds of the bolt of cloth without committing any robbery. What are the dividends but the reimbursement of the people that have paid the miners and mechanics and builders for their work before the cloth was sold?

The report of the Comptroller of the Currency shows that the average return on all the shares and bonds of all the corporations in the United States is 4.3percent. That doesn’t look unreasonable. It isn’t very much more than savings-bank interest. Of course, some corporations make very much more, but many must make nothing in order to bring the average down to 4.3percent. Besides, there are a few bonds that do not pay 4.5percent or more, so that the average return on the shares, which represent the ownership of the mills and factories, would be less than 4.3percent.

What does a man produce? Well, put a man with only his bare hands upon a spot of earth, or in a mine hole, or by the side of a stream and how much will he produce? What are the chances that he will not starve to death before he can produce anything? If you give him tools, and “grub-stake” him, in mining lingo, or support him until he has produced something and it has been marketed, the produce of other men has been given him. They have got to be paid for their produce in some way. The man in question can’t have all he produces without defrauding the men who produced the tools and food which he used during the time he was getting his product made or extracted.14—Philadelphia Record.

VII.Analysis

1. What is proved by this editorial?
2. The method of ModelI consists of overwhelming the enemy with an avalanche of examples. The method of ModelII is to define the words used by an opponent and, by analyzing the meaning of what he asserts, to prove that he does not see his way through the question.
3. Note the framework: (Par.1) “Four W’s”; (Par.2) Statement of Positions of Opponent and Writer; (Par.3) Exposition of Writer’s Position; (Par.4) Refutation of Opponent’s Idea; (Par.5) Conclusion.

VIII.Exercises

1. Define and discuss the etymology of “collision,” “transported,” “convert,” “considerable,” “reimburse,” “dividend,” “corporations,” “factories,” “starve,” “lingo,” “support,” “extract,” “percentage,” “average.”
2. Subject for short expository speeches: “Socialism,” “Shares,” “Bonds,” “Corporations,” “Savings Banks,” “Interest.”
3. Write an answer to the model.
4. Write an editorial refuting some current fallacy or what you deem such. Use the analytic method of the model.
5. Examine the editorials in some current paper to determine whether they are expository or argumentative, constructive or destructive, if their frameworks are as good as those of the models, if their matter is as convincing, if their style is as good, and if their total effect is better or worse.

IX.Suggested Reading

Thomas Gray’s Elegy in a Country Churchyard.

X.Memorize

OLD IRONSIDES15

Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!
Long has it waved on high,
And many an eye has danced to see
That banner in the sky;
Beneath it rung the battle shout,
And burst the cannon’s roar;—
The meteor of the ocean air
Shall sweep the clouds no more.

Her deck, once red with heroes’ blood,
Where knelt the vanquished foe,
When winds were hurrying o’er the flood
And waves were white below,
No more shall feel the victor’s tread,
Or know the conquered knee;—
The harpies of the shore shall pluck
The eagle of the sea!

Oh, better that her shattered hulk
Should sink beneath the wave;
Her thunders shook the mighty deep,
And there should be her grave;
Nail to the mast her holy flag,
Set every threadbare sail,
And give her to the god of storms,
The lightning and the gale.

Oliver Wendell Holmes.
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