Our nation became aroused to the necessity existing for the avoidance of Waste and the conservation of food stuffs. All civilized countries awakened to the same urgent call. The "Mormon" grain-storing movement was no longer a joke—a target for ridicule. The gaunt spectre of Famine had shown a glimpse of his face, and the whole world trembled at the prospect. The God of Joseph and of Brigham had vindicated the patient labors of His faithful handsmaids, and fulfilled in part the solemn forebodings of prophecy.
"Mormon" Grain for the Government.—Not the least item of interest connected with this subject, is the fact that the United States Government, through its Food Administrator, in May, 1918, made request upon the authorities of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, for the turning in of all the Relief Society wheat then on hand, for use in the war. The request was cheerfully complied with, 225,000 bushels of wheat being promptly furnished by the Church to the Federal Government.
The Drought of 1919.—How easily a famine could come, was shown during the prolonged drought in the summer of 1919, when throughout the Intermountain West and in regions beyond, lands usually productive lay parching for many weeks under the torrid rays of the sun. As a result, millions of acres of growing grain, especially in the dry-farming districts, perished for want of moisture. And yet there are men who deem human powers and earthly resources all-sufficient, and who declare, in the face of prophecy, that famine and war are obsolete and never again can be.
A Scholar's Opinion.—Such a pronouncement, as to war, was made repeatedly, in public, only a short while before the World War broke out. That splendid scholar and publicist, David Starr Jordan, expressed by tongue and pen his positive conviction that another great conflict, in this advanced and cultured age, was humanly impossible—it simply could not come.[[5]] But Another had said, two thousand years before: "Such things must come."[[6]] And not long after the delivery of Doctor Jordan's optimistic, well-meant prediction, the greatest hell of conflict that this world has ever known burst forth and well-nigh wrapt the globe in a mantle of smoke and flame.
The One Safe Guide.—"Men may come and men may go," but God and Truth "go on forever." Heaven and Earth may pass, but the divine word, by whomsoever spoken, will endure unshaken "amid the wreck of matter and the crash of worlds." The sure word of prophecy, flowing from the fountain of the Spirit, is the one safe guide through the chaos of the present and the mystical mazes of the future.
A Prophet's Voice.—More firmly founded than the scholarly utterance in question, was a prediction made by President Wilford Woodruff, at Brigham City, Utah, in the summer of 1894. In the course of a public address, referring to the near approach of the judgments of the last days, the venerable leader said: "Great changes are at our doors. The next twenty years will see mighty changes among the nations of the earth." And it was just twenty years, or in the summer of 1914, when the terrible strife that has wrought so many mighty changes swept like a whirlwind over the nations.
Other Prophetic Warnings.—One could almost believe that President Woodruff's fellow Apostle, Orson Pratt, was gazing with seeric vision upon the same dreadful picture, when he thundered into the ears of the world this solemn admonition: "A voice is heard unto the ends of the Earth! A sound of terror and dismay! A sound of nations rushing to battle! Fierce and dreadful is the contest! Mighty kingdoms and empires melt away! The destroyer has gone forth; the pestilence that walketh in darkness; the plagues of the last days are at hand; and who shall be able to escape? None but the righteous; none but the upright in heart."[[7]]
Eight years later this same Apostle, then at Liverpool, about to embark for America, issued to the inhabitants of Great Britain this "Prophetic Warning":
"If you will not repent and unite yourselves with God's Kingdom, then the days are near at hand when the righteous shall be gathered out of your midst. And woe unto you when that day shall come, for it shall be a day of vengeance upon the British nation! . . . . Your armies shall perish; your maritime forces shall cease; your cities shall be ravaged, burned and made desolate, and your strongholds shall be thrown down; the poor shall rise against the rich, and their storehouses and their fine mansions shall be pillaged, their merchandise and their gold and their silver and their rich treasures shall be plundered. Then shall the lords and nobles and the merchants of the land, and all in high places, be brought down and shall sit in the dust and howl for the miseries that shall be upon them. And they that trade by sea shall lament and mourn; for their traffic shall cease."[[8]]
Saviors of the Nation.—To escape the judgments hanging over the wicked, and find a place where they might worship God unmolested, the Latter-day Saints fled to the Rocky Mountains. Here, and here only, during the temporary isolation sought and found by them in the chambers of "the everlasting hills," could they hope to be let alone long enough to become strong enough to accomplish their greater destiny. For there was more in that enforced exodus and the founding of this mountain-girl empire than the surface facts reveal. If tradition can be relied upon, Joseph Smith prophesied that the Elders of Israel would save this Nation in the hour of its extremest peril. At a time when anarchy would threaten the life of the Government, and the Constitution would be hanging as by a thread, the maligned and misunderstood "Mormons"—always patriotic, and necessarily so from the very genius of their religion—would stand firm upon Freedom's rocky ramparts, and as champions of law and order, of liberty and justice, call to their aid in the same grand cause kindred spirits from every part of the nation and from every corner of the world. All this preparatory to a mighty movement that would sweep every form of evil from off the face of the land, and rear the Zion of God upon the spot consecrated for that purpose. This traditional utterance of their martyred Seer is deeply imbedded in the heart and hope of the "Mormon" people.