a poetic dactyl has three parts, one long
and two short. "Anapest" comes from a Greek verb which means "strike
back"; an anapest is a reversed dactyl. Most English poems are written
in iambi. Longfellow's _Hiawatha_ is in trochees, _Evangeline_ in
dactyls, and _The Destruction of Sennacherib_ (see page 70) in
anapests.

CHAPTER XVII

EDITORIALS--DESTRUCTIVE

"O great corrector of enormous times,
Shaker of o'er-rank states, thou grand decider
Of dusty and old titles, that healest with blood
The earth when it is sick, and curest the world
O' the pleurisy of people!"
BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.

I. Introduction

In Chapter XVI constructive editorials were discussed. The object of
this chapter is to present a few exercises on destructive editorials.
Their object, of course, is not really to create ruin; it is merely to
clear away rubbish in order to prepare the ground for the edifice of
truth.

II. Assignment

Write an editorial in reply to an editorial in which a false position is
assumed by the writer.

III. Model I

Vice-President Marshall's declaration, made some time ago at
Wabash College, that the old man is being shoved off the stage
everywhere, needs revision, as does the opinion of another
statesman that men over fifty are atrophied.

In the last great war between France and Germany the campaign
was planned and led by elderly men. The Emperor William, then
King of Prussia, was in his seventy-fourth year; Von Moltke, the
master strategist of the war, was seventy-one years old; General
von Roon was sixty-eight; and Bismarck, the master mind in the
larger field, was in his fifty-sixth year.

In the next great war in which high military efficiency was
displayed, Admiral Togo was approaching his sixtieth year when
he took the field; Prince Oyama, the commander-in-chief of the
Japanese forces in Manchuria, had passed his sixtieth year;
Field Marshal Nodzu was sixty-three; Field Marshal Yamagata was
sixty-six; General Kuroki was sixty; and General Nogi, who took
Port Arthur after a series of desperate conflicts, carried on
with unflinching energy and almost breathless rapidity, was
nearly sixty years of age.

In the present war Lord Kitchener, the organizing genius of the
English army, is sixty-four; and Sir John French, commanding the
English forces in the field, is sixty-two. Whe