Salt Lake City, Utah, Sunday Morning, December 1, 1935. Solomons Warning to Meddlers HE THAT passeth by and meddleth with strife belonging not to him, is like one who taketh a dog by the ears. So said Solomon the wise, in the 17th proverb and 26th chapter of his compilation. This admonition should be kept in mind by those who would like to have this government join a crusade for humanity. One would naturally surmise, after liberation of a few insular ingrates and our experience in the World war, that the role of Don Quixote would be the last in which the patriotic citizenry of this republic would care to be cast again. The best advice to men and nations is found in the 34th Psalm, 14th verse: Seek peace and pursue it. Wars were the chief industries of the world for centuries. Armed forces patrolled the earth in the interest of humanity as they interpreted its needs. Soldiering was long regarded as the most honorable profession in which to engage. Knights roved from point to point seeking quarrels and opportunities to save damsels in distress. Since the formation of this government, as many as 50 major struggles between races, religions, factions, nations and dynasties have taken place. There were bloody conflicts between Christian powers in Europe and between rival republics in South America. From northern Africa now comes the clash of resounding arms. In far off Asia reverberates the echo of tramping troops invading a helpless land. It will continue thus so long as history continues to be written in blood with the mailed fist of ambition, and that will be while human nature is the nature of human beings. Mane Francois Xavier Bichat (1771 to 1802) created the new science of general anatomy and discussed abnormalities of tissue. Early Medical Societies, England Taking their origin from informal meetings of small groups of scientific men, these societies exerted a great influence on medical education in the 18th and 19th centuries. Prominent among the early organizers were John Coakley Lettsom and John Fothergill. Shall we take sides? Are we to assume jurisdiction and pronounce one combatant guilty and the other innocent? Are we really neutral if we interfere, either with words or bullets? Should this government take sides and still profess neutrality? Would that be candid, or honest? Some philanthropic jingoes, immune from conscription themselves but reconciled, as Artemus Ward remarked, to see all their wives relatives go to war, seem not only willing but anxious to give public opinion that sentimental shove which often lands people in a maelstrom of carnage from which they emerge with weakened morale, diluted patriotism, diminished numbers and intensified suffering. Are we spineless cowards, they ask, that our government refuses to send our boys to the slaughter and vast stores of sustenance to foreign forces fighting on alien shores for the settlement of issues concerning the merits of which we can scarcely presume an understanding? What a pitiful excuse exclaim some exempt philanthropists, to say that we might lose lives and money. It would be useless, even spineless, to undertake to assure these wielders of lath swords who never knew the smell of gunpowder in their whole lives, that all the coveted land, the vindication of affronted prestige, the petty or material prizes over which battles on remote continents are being waged and all the lasting benefits experience teaches that our moral or military intervention might bestow on suffering humanity, are not worth the life of one of our American boys who would be the victim of thus taking alien dogs by the ears. Waiving reference to our own loss or gain by entering the World war as a subject too sordid for the altruistic minds of meddlers to contemplate, what did we accomplish for the cause of peace, or for Christian religion, or for the relief of mankind from oppression? After the lapse of 18 years, neither moralists nor mathematicians have been able to figure out any lasting gains for ourselves or for anyone else accruing from active participation which followed our moral interference and our expressions of preference for one side as against the other. A single exception may be noted as a real advantage only when our present attitude with respect to alien wars becomes a fixed policy of this government. If we have learned to avoid foreign entanglements it will be the only thing of value this people or country got out of the World war. The only way to be neutral is to keep our fingers off the ears of alien dogs of war; to refrain from meddling in strife not belonging to us; to attend to our own business regardless of the advice of ex secretaries of state who would have us declare moral warfare on Italy when they know it is only one step further to actual involvement. Our only course, following counsel and experience, is to keep aloof from conflicts in Europe, Asia and Africa and not be deceived by confidential assurances of seasoned diplomats that they are forming a holy alliance in the cause of peace and justice. When the American eagle flies into clouds of poison gas and powder hovering over alien arenas, it is bound to fly out a badly singed or well plucked bird, with the objects of its solicitude laughing loudest at its plight. If there were some way to identify and segregate those who preach interference in alien controversies, and finance their departure for Abyssinia or Manchuria to perform the valiant part into which their arguments might easily implicate our boys and able bodied men, they would, as the first grader said, learn to spell cat again. The way of peace they know not, said Paul writing to the Romans. But they might get a first hand idea of what Solomon meant by warning those who meddle with strife not belonging to them against catching strange dogs of war by the ears.