"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 Chapter XVI 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. Model I 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_, November 11, 1914.[13]