I
WAR HELL AND BULL FIGHTS
Up in the interior of our country we don't look upon the Mexican situation with the same passionate interest that they do down here on the border—in El Paso, for instance.
Here is a town of sixty thousand. A magnificent city, with everything that goes to make our modern civilization desirable. A city of sky-scrapers, a million-dollar hotel (the one I'm stopping at), with still others that would do credit to a city twice its size. Splendid stores, residences, and railway station, and forty-five miles of fine macadam streets—a city of gimp, go, and bang—a city to make an American citizen proud of his country.
It costs five cents and ten minutes' time to go from the center of El Paso over to Mexico across the Rio Grande—a muddy, dirty stream that one could wade across—into the city of Juarez—a town of about ten thousand—the quickest change from everything desirable to everything undesirable that I have ever experienced. A fit title to the story would be "From Heaven to Hell." I went to see a bull fight in Juarez, the first and last bull fight I shall ever witness.
I wonder if Sherman ever saw a bull fight; I don't believe he did, or he would have said, "War is the vestibule—the real thing is what is called a bull fight." In my humble opinion the Almighty allowed the devil to institute war among men to give us a warning foretaste of hell. The devil, ambitious to outdo himself, made one more try and invented the bull fight (which is a misnomer—it is not a "fight"), and then the devil said: "I'm through, beat it if you can."
War is a fight—men against men, intellect against intellect. A cock fight is a fight—cock against cock. A dog fight is a fight—dog against dog. A prize fight is a fight—bruiser against bruiser, go to it, and may the best side win.
The devil invented all these, but there was an element of fairness in them. The devil looked upon them and saw the element of fairness. It girded him. He tried once more, invented bull torturing, baited his hook by naming it bull "fighting," and fished for a nation to adopt it. Spain bit, and she and her offspring deserve all they've reaped in consequence—and then some.
For a hellish, damnable, brutalizing institution, I place the torturing of bulls for amusement at the head of the class for the double-distilled quintessence of his Satanic Majesty's final and last effort to put one over on the Angel of Light. The horrors and cruelties practiced since time began have back of them ambition, hate, bigotry, ignorance, or supposed justice; but the bull fight has none of these back of it for an excuse. It's done in the name of sport! for pastime!
Ambition?—"It's a glorious cheat," but posterity may reap the benefit. Hate?—It burns itself out. Bigotry?—Darkness, preceding dawn. Ignorance?—It can be cured. Justice?—Blind but sometimes hits the mark. But the bull fight! Invented for sport, pastime—that which is as necessary to man's development as food. A country that lets its children have the bull fight to play with is on the toboggan slide.