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Show am- & if I I Tffiffgfe IL (Released by Western Newspaper Union.) SNOWS FOR THE CROPS VIE WITH THE SUNSHINE THE TRAIN wound its way around hills, over valleys, through an occasional occa-sional tunnel, across frozen rivers, ever westward across the Dakotas and into Montana. From the car windows we saw a world blanketed in crystal white snow. More snow was falling and a blizzardy wind was piling it in great drifts. Across the snow, some distance dis-tance from the tracks, was a farmhouse. farm-house. Smoke, the clean smoke from a wood fire, was coming from the chimney. Pete and Mary were keeping the home fires burning while Dad and Mother were wintering in the Southland. South-land. Pete was also keeping open the lines of communication between the house and the barn and cattle sheds. Between times he worked at the wood pile, that there might be ammunition with which to repulse the blitzkrieg of cold. He cursed the ever-falling and drifting snow which caused him labor and difficulties. difficul-ties. Far away to the Southland, Dad and Mother read of the heavy snowfall snow-fall in their state. Mother hoped it would not inconvenience Pete and Mary, but they were young and capable. Father gloried in the moisture mois-ture the snow was bringing to insure next summer's crops, and thanked Providence for it. From the snug coziness of the Pullman we admired the beauty of the scene, enjoyed the howling of the blizzard, and congratulated ourselves our-selves on having chosen a northern route to the warmth and sunshine of the West coast. It was all in the point of view. SUN SEEKERS SHOULD YOU WISH to know who, as a class, are the great travelers of America during these winter months, just go to Florida or California Cali-fornia and count the number of visiting vis-iting farmers and their families. Thousands of them escape the ice and snow of the northern states by going South for the warmth, the sunshine and the privilege of being out of doors not for the night clubs and the gaming tables. RICH AND POOR IN' SAME CAMP NOTHING I can think of would be more beneficial than a universal citizenship training law. A law which would provide six months, at least, in camp for every young man between the ages of 19 and 21 years. Put the workman's son and the banker's son under canvas together and under exactly the same conditions. condi-tions. Give them an opportunity to get acquainted and become "buddies." "bud-dies." It would break down the forming of class distinctions in America. It would create a race of better Americans. It would demonstrate demon-strate the equal opportunity for alL While in such camps, military discipline dis-cipline and training would be essential, essen-tial, the one greatest purpose would be a training in citizenship, a training train-ing in mutual understanding. The idea would be more popular as a citizenship training law than as a military training law. WINSLOW is a thriving town in southern Indiana. Ask any business man there the reason for the town's prosperity and he will point to A. J. Heuring and the Winslow Dispatch. Winslow is but one of thousands of American towns in which the local editor and his paper is the foundation founda-tion on which town growth and prosperity pros-perity are built. NAVAL BASES AND THE COST IN HAWAII we have a naval, air and army base that is valuable as an outpost for the protection of our western .coast line. It is valuable because the government has expended expend-ed half a billion dollars or more to fortify it. Before an enemy could capture the vast stores of oil, munitions muni-tions and other war supplies, it would have to silence -the great guns on Diamond Head, and others on the Island of Oahu. The enemy woidd have to land against the opposition of a full division of the United States army stationed there. The eight spots selected on eight British islands in the Atlantic, and turned over to the American government, govern-ment, will be valuable as outposts for our Atlantic seacoast when they, like Hawaii, have been heavily fortified forti-fied and garrisoned. To attempt to use them as air and naval bases until they are protected would be about as practical as to leave a stack of watermelons in the center of the public square without a guard over them. To fortify these eight new air and naval bases will moan nn expenditure expendi-ture of from four to six billion dollars. dol-lars. Where Is such a vast sum to come from? Including the appropriations appropri-ations congress has voted for armament arma-ment expenditures during the next 12 nonths, the federal government's indebtedness is more than sixty billion bil-lion dollars. That means nn obligation obliga-tion of over $-100 for each man, woman wom-an and child: it means a mortgage of over $2,000 on the homes and fr.'ms of cacli family of five; it means an annual interest charge of over ?70 for each family of five. |