Ragnar Redbeard - Might Is Right

Belle Starre, the border bandit (who died in a fight with State troops) was the daughter of a guerilla chief. She selected her numerous husbands from the bravest dare-devils in her band, and on the slightest sign of cowardice, they were discarded. “I do love a fellow who shows grit,” was a common expression of hers.

A printed catalogue of the sanguinary duels, that have been fought through jealousy, would not be less than fifty miles thick. (The mythical Cain and Abel are supposed to have quarreled over some ante-diluvian young woman’s charms; and she must have married Cain.) If the duels between the animals, plants, birds, fishes, germs, and infusorians, for possession of the female, were also added thereto; this planet would not contain the first chapter of the first volume. Women like to be able to say that two men have fought over them. All female animals display a similar peculiarity.

Bushrangers, freebooters, rebels, pirates, have never lacked for love romances. Plays and novels by the thousand have been written upon their escapades, and are always perennially popular. From the Arabian Nights down to Marie Correli and Ouida, it is one long rhythmic lilt of ‘Love and Women and War.’ Women authors are specially prone to glorify in their heroes, beauty-of-form, daring, hardihood, and resolution.

Jesse James and his reckless band of outlaws, also had their famous love adventures. The mother of the James boys had her arm torn off by the explosion of a detective’s bomb, thrown through her bedroom window, in the darkness of the night.

The memory of “Brennan on the Moor,” (and his dashing inamorata, who “handed him a blunderbuss from underneath her cloak”) is still as green as the hillsides of Innisfail. Like Mahomet, Tell, William Wallace, Cæsar, and Napoleon, this famous outlaw’s popularity rested on — a suggestive economic fact: —

Though not cast in the American mould, Mr. Brennan was somewhat of a “practical statesman.” Decidedly!

According to Inspector Shaak’s very cleverly written pamphlet; each of the Chicago bomb-throwers had his own romance. An heiress supplied money for the defence of one, whom she proposed to marry: but the most daring and logical of them all (when defeated) “fell upon his sword,” like unto Brutus and Cato and Saul. That is to say, he blew his own head off with explosives brought to him by his lady-love. It is also noteworthy that he was the son of a Crown Prince. Heredity therefore may have had much to do with the magnitude of his concept. In se magna ruunt .

Another of these slave-betrayed, mob-abandoned enthusiasts was the brother of an American General, and seems to have led a wandering adventurous life; finally falling ‘head-over-heals’ in love with a Southern quadroon; who still zealously fans the embers of her dead husband’s agitation (limited of course by police censorship.) Whenever she rises to speak in this city, she is surrounded by stenographic-mouchards and by armed officers of the “Law” in picturesque uniforms.

By direct command of the People, two of those men were choked to death and two others had their necks neatly broken; amid reverberating shouts of worldwide approbation. Their ‘Power’ was not equal to their ‘Logic,’ and consequently they were snuffed-out in strict accordance with the Law of the survival-of-the-fittest. ‘They who make half-revolutions dig their own graves’ is an old Cromwellian proverb, that they had evidently failed to properly consider.

Thus the vibrations of Matter and Motion are to be seen in all social phenomena; and Regal Authority is upheld by the combined strength of arm and brain, that gave it birth . “Man, like every other animal must remain subject to a severe struggle.” (Darwin.)

Love in sexual relationship, Power in social adjustments, Polarity and Magnetism in physics, Gravitation in astronomy, and Might in ethics, are exact synonyms; — correlated phases of one primary Assertive — “the Persistence of Force.” Se nu san — so na si . The Sultan of Turkey has been melodramatically described by W. E. Gladstone, that “Grand Old Spider” as — “the Assassin of the Century,” and yet the women of the East (even those of Armenia) would claw each others eyes out, for half a chance to enter his harem.

Dr. Jamieson, the South African freebooter, and his chief, Cecil Rhodes, though unmercifully abused and denounced as wicked criminals, are continuously being deluged with written proposals of marriage, from heiresses on both sides of the Atlantic. These two men, by Force and Diplomacy, “stole” two million acres of the finest agricultural and pastoral land in Africa: together with gold mines, silver mines, copper mines, diamond mines; also vast herds of sheep and cattle.

They carried fire and sword into the strongholds of their enemies — shot “gods” with rifle-bullets — cut the throats of priestly sorcerers in scores — shed the blood of “adversaries” like water; and reduced the defeated Kaffirs to a respectful condition of “constitutional freedom.” There is no cant and hypocrisy about Cecil Rhodes! — None! He is a man made whole — blunt as Napoleon or Bismarck. He is (in his own sphere) of the Cæsar, Cromwell, Darwinian stock. Believing implicitly in the survival of the fittest, he is the despair of the priestling and the terror of the politician. He laughs at their parchment Laws and shrieking Editorials — he rides rough-shod over their Golden Rules — he scorns their Sermons on the Mount — he spits upon their Tabulated ‘Commandments.’ He takes what he wants, if he has the Power — not otherwise. He does not beg — he does not pray — he does not “steal.” No! — he goes direct for what he wants and “annexes” it, if he can. Nor does he weep crocodile tears, over the ‘enslavement’ of races that Nature manifestly stamped with inferiority. In days long gone by, such men were the norms of Anglo-Saxondom. Now! Alas! they are astounding exceptions.

If this Republic had produced one Cecil Rhodes forty years ago, the Civil War (provoked by idiotic emotionalism) would never have been fought. (Civil wars are necessary then a country is overstocked, but these States were not over populated in 1862.) Instead of ‘Sounding the Jubilee’ for plantation ‘niggers,’ he would have Sounded it for his own Race; by sending Grants and Shermans, not to plunder and devastate the Shenandoah valley and the home of Washington, but to seize, conquer, and re-colonize, South and Central America, from El Paso to Cape Horn.

Among the Norse and Germanic forefathers, it was considered the saddest disgrace that could befall any matron; to be the mother of a weakling, or a laggard in war. Only for the debasing influence of priestcraft that would be felt by modern women — of all grades. Roman matrons have died of broken hearts and even drowned themselves in shame, at the poltroonery displayed by a son. If past generations had to depend on the sweet girly-girly fragile young thing of to-day — or the lean “lady graduate” for its reproductive Ova, we would long ago have became a swarm of ring-tailed baboons. Poor things, they also feel their artificiality — feel it in their hearts; when they look upon the spindle-shanked, mutilated males (scarecrows of men) that they are expected to “love, honor, and obey.”

Over intellectualism (bad enough in man) transfigures women into freaks. The more Animal Nature a maiden possesses; the more of a true woman she is — the better wife and mother she will make. Culture and refinement are horrible substitutes, for the grand old matronly virtues — beauty, naturalness, purity, maidenly hypnotism. Intellectualism renders more sensitive. Sensitive persons are very excitable, timid, and liable to disease. Over cultivation of the brain cells undoubtedly produces (in both sexes) physical decay and leads on towards insanity.