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Show Those "Good Old Days" Tn the early clays of America the sturdy frontiersman had n way of being wild, rude and lawless upon occasion, simply to prove that the vaunted democracy of his country was an absolute fact. , , Kestricilons irked him. His local laws were few, and he broke them with a grand gesture. Freedom was the word ;ind the frontiersman was punctilious about even its pettiest forms. . ,, . . The modern descendant ol the pioneer, m 1929, does things differently. From morning to evening he is swathed with a network of rules and regulations. If he goes riding lie must observe a dizzying multiplicity of laws. If sickness comes to his familv the local government can say whether or not he can leave the ho'.u e. lie may not even own a gun without with-out a permit. If he has a party, in the evening, he must see that the proceedings are relatively restrained; otherwise the neighbors are apt to send the police. This doesn't bother the modern man very much. He s used to it. But the old frontiersman, if he could see it, would conclude that the world had gone to the dogs. Indeed, judging from current literature, a good many people peo-ple feel that, way. Magazines and books are full of doleful cries. The free-born American, it seems, has forfeited his birthright and has accepted slavery. He cannot call his soul his own. Sir William Joynson-llicks, home secretary for Great Britain, made a remark the other day that bears on this situation. situ-ation. Discussing the restrictive legislation which he, as home secretary, is obliged to enforce, he said: "I sav quite frankly that you have got to realize that the old days'of the right of every man to do as he likes with his own are a relic of the 18th and 19th centuries and will not work in the 20th." That statement expresses the situation admirably. It presents pre-sents a condition we must recognize. We may not like it, but we must accept it. J We are the descendants of the frontiersmen, true enough, and we live in the same part of the globe that they lived in; but our world is as different from theirs as ancient Rome. The standards and customs they used simply will not work today. We might as well stop thinking about them. An utterly new kind of socictv has been brought forth in the last half century, entirely unlike anything the world ever law before. Modern machinery, modern methods of transportation, trans-portation, modern forms of communication, have given every man an infinitely greater number of next-door neighbors than his ancestors had. Year by year the necessity for co-operation grows greater; year by year it becomes increasingly evident evi-dent that no man can live for himself alone. This may be very fine or it may be too bad; worrying about it won't help much. The main thing is to admit that the, change has come, that the old days are gone forever, that the old standards are eternally out of date. |