Shall we NEVER see Carcassonne, Father Time?
***
We shudder when we think of what you did to us during the Old Year, Father Time.
Ah, but you were hard on us—bitter hard. Our little ones panted for a breath of fresh air, Father Time; and they died like flies, in noisome, reeking, crowded tenements, because there was not, in all God’s Universe—where there’s light and air for every flower that flecks the field—a breath of fresh air for the little children of the slums.
Ah, it was pitiful, Father Time!
Our feeble ones, young and old, perished miserably of cold and hunger, in the midst of a land that worships the Good God, and amid such an accumulation of wealth as was never known before since the Morning stars looked down upon a newly-made world.
Poverty, Crime, Vice, Drunkenness, Riot, War, Famine, Pestilence, Earthquake, Conflagration have glutted their awful appetites upon us during the Old Year, Father Time. To WHAT are you leading us in the New?
Will the heart of the world grow harder and harder, Father Time?
Will the greed of human avarice demand still larger sacrifice of human lives?
Will the Selfishness of Class gorge itself still further upon ravenous conquest, and remorseless exploitation?