by Richard van Pelt, WWI Correspondent

The news and headlines from The Daily Capital Journal:

GERMANY PLAYING WITH BAKU’S VAST OIL-FIELD AS STAKE
German Influence Succeeds in Sending Turkey Against Russia
SULTAN’S TROOPS ARE MARCHING ON BATUM
Its Capture Would Give Germany Large Quantities of Badly Needed Oil

DAY’S WAR STORY FROM ALL SECTIONS FOR BUSY READERS
No Cessation in Germans’ Attempt to Break Through to French Coast
SEVERE WEATHER CAUSES SUFFERING
Country Flooded by Belgians Is Vast Bog Covered With Corpses

TURKEY IS DIVIDED OVER WAR – STRONG PARTY AGINST IT
Garrisons Are in revolt and Administration May Be Overthrown
ATTEMPT IS MADE ON LIFE OF ENVER PASHA
His Headquarters Wrecked and Five German Officers Killed By Bomb

Locally, in a headline that could have come from today’s paper:

ESTIMATES FOR THE BRIDGE COMPLETE
Cost for Bridge at Each of Five Possible Sites Made by Engineer Bowlby

The estimates are made upon the proposition of whether the bridge is constructed at the foot of one of the five principle streets of the city, considered the most feasible. Marion, Center, Chemeketa, Court and State street for the Marion county approach. The State street estimate is based upon the basis of a two-draw bridge, which will be necessary to conform to government requirements and all of the other estimates are based upon a one-draw bridge.

The estimated cost of the five options varied from 198 thousand dollars to a high of 273 thousand dollars.

The paper’s editorial page contrasted two of the Deity’s creations: women and horses:

WOMAN’S WRONGS

Woman’s capacity for bringing wrongs upon herself is infinite. She is eternally at it. Woman’s wrongs multiply more rapidly than do her rights. Every right granted her or forced upon her with the best intentions or conquered by her own efforts brings with it a litter of wrongs.

Every gift of this character is first dipped in the River Pactolas and turns to gold, beautiful to look upon,but of no use for food. The modern Midas is a female. [though the writer thinks the editor had the myth turned on its head. Everything Midas touched turned to gold. In the legend Dionysus removed the curse by having him wash his hands in the River Pactolas]

Chief among her wrongs is the fact that in our own country and others matrimony is becoming a lost art. There is still some marrying and giving in marriage, but the divorce court is the alembic that reduces connubial combinations to their original elements.

Woman is being forced into industrial and other bread-winning pursuits, where she is confronted by unjust discriminations. She is not paid as man is paid, and her pay is cursed with a downward tendency, in spite of the prowess of individuals in the opposite direction.

She is no longer the home keeper exclusively. She is forced into a “career,” a Mission,” a “fad,” and is compelled to do the drudge and dree in order to make herself self-supporting; and the number of women who are forced into those pursuits is so great that the competition cuts down compensation to the cost of living, and not infrequently below it.

What is the cause of this? Are men less gallant than formerly, or are women less beautiful? Surely not, because the present-day woman is an improvement on the woman of all times.

Her chief fault is her discontent with the conditions for which God created her. She no longer believes that she was made from a single rib of man, who probably would not willingly have spared the rib for the purpose had it not been surreptitiously taken in his sleep. She thinks she has a whole anatomy of her own, could have originated without man and could get on very much better if he were out of the way.

She is not content with the beautiful jeweled box of Pandora as a thing to delight the eye, but must know what there is in it, must have all there is in it worth having, and so she has unfortunately loosed unnumbered evils that have filled the world with woe and weeping.

Woman is a great blessing – in her place, but her place is on the leeward side of man, not the windward.

WAR DESTROYS HORSES

One of the features of the war to which little attention has been paid is the appalling loss of horses. It is known that a horse soon wears out under hard usage, having far less endurance than man. Our own war demonstrated that well-seasoned infantry could out-travel cavalry on a continued march and literally wear the horses out. It is claimed that practically all the horses that were in service at the beginning of the war are already in the scrap heap. Europe is being cleaned of its horses by the war, and the effect of this will be shown graphically when peace comes and the remnants of the armies return to their farms and occupations. The farmers will be sadly handicapped in carrying on their work and making their fields again prolific, by the lack of their best friend and servant, the horse. The indications now are that horses, especially draft and farm stock, will command high prices for some years, as the stock lost cannot be replaced, the world’s supply being drained. Here is a hunch for the wide-awake American farmer. Europe is now drawing heavily on America for horses for war purposes, and when peace come the demand it will cause will exceed that now being made. It is estimated that between 2,000,000 and 3,000,000 horses have already been sent to the scrap heap since the war started.