Adventure Magazine Cover — page 82: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

76 | Adventure terms, and Colonel Walker had them march into Granada and surrender. - What a day that was! Church bells peal- ing, men and women weeping with joy at their deliverance, white . American-born Nicaraguans and native brown brothers parading the streets arm in arm singing patriotic songs in English and Spanish, the cry of “Walker, Walker, Walker” on every tongue and the little man making a hun- dred speeches from steps of public buildings and from balconies. | They offered him the presidency that day. And he refused it. But a short time later they voted him in by an enormous majority. All Central America was glad. Old sores between Nicaragua and other republics were healed quickly. Walker sent consuls and ambassadors to them, who were received graciously, and their ambassadors came to open offices in Granada. And he sent an ambassador to Washington who was highly complimented upon the work of regenera- tion Walker was doing-in the former tur- bulent republic to the south. And yet the. country did not suddenly seem to spring into prosperity. The Servile conscripts and Liberal volunteers did not attach themselves very seriously to useful employment. Even the American-born soldiers seemed to be afflicted with tropical lassitude on the farms the Government had granted them. President Walker studied these conditions carefully. Dressed in black broadcloth, silk hat, white-bosomed shirt and knotted bow tie, he gravely walked about the capital and pondered much over the methods to help develop the country. siderably, and, becoming in doubt over his religion, relinquished it and joined the local Catholic church. He ‘really and_. truly wanted to help the people of this country he had adopted as his own. With very small extra exertion on the part of the people the land could be made to yield millions. The battle of the philosophers waged in his brain. Perhaps after all those high- browed philosophers might be wrong, thought he. Under militarism, with the people under absolute orders from above, especially under orders from a Than like himself? And more particularly with the brown people under such orders and with the few hundred white men to drive them? Would not great good accrue unto them? Also he prayed con- ~ More, vastly more, thought he, than they could do voluntarily for themselves. He could fancy himself sitting in power, a god as it were, molding the bodies and brains of men to his liking. Yea, verily, he could do a better job, calculated he, than Jehovah Himself; and he figured out a scheme to assist God in his work in Central America and _ other portions of Latin America. For why stop with Nicaragua? There were Honduras and Guatemala and Salvador and Costa Rica; and the entire ‘continent of South America lay to the south. These other countries could be swiftly conquered, for their own behoof, after he had got the Nicaraguans into bondage, summed he up, as the idea got control of him. Thus did William Walker desert the faith of liberty and the faith in men to live their own lives in their own way. Thus did he desert the best of the philosophers, those kind, fearless, intellectual adventurers who have suffered and wet their dried ink with tears to give their noble thoughts to the world; the philosophers of the doctrine of Live and Let Live who in all lands strive to get their country to be the best and help the rest of the world by becoming a shining example before them; philosophers who have failed partly in all lands, and who always will fail partly, but who do some good as the centuries roll along. Opposed to them are the philosophers of the Mailed Fist and the Iron Heel who in all lands preach the doctrine of militarism, the grab- bing and enslaving of other countries and forcing men within their own borders to truckle and crawl to official commands of action and speech and who try to mold men to a preconceived pattern of thought, desire and belief. President Walker was almost hypnotic in his manner of speech. He carefully began _ a propaganda upon the American-born farmers and erstwhile soldiers. He showed these white men what a real * help it would be to the brown brothers to enslave them and force them to do the work in the hot sun while the white men lolled in the shade. Some of them doubtless were easy to persuade. However, a few dis- sented and left for the United States, one of whom was former Captain, and now Farmer Doubleday. The gorge of these few had risen at the vain mockery of ~ Gomichbooks (Q) (Eo)