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Show w All of the World Envies YOU Tom Treanor, Los Angeles Times staff representative, writing from Bucharest presents some of the finest reasons in the world why citizens of the United States should be thankful that they live in this country and under our system of government. He tells that one of the most envied persons that he knows there, is a young woman who is to marry an American Am-erican and has received her visa and the assurance that she will be permitted to leave there for this country. He says in part: "I have been listening for weeks, or rather months, now and I know in part what the word America means to these people. There is, of course, that sweetest possession posses-sion of all, security, which is appreciated only when its absence has been suffered. We can't imagine what security se-curity means because we have never suffered the real insecurity in-security they know here. The richest man feels it. He's seen the property of others expropriated. "The healthiest man feels it. He is subject to military service and machine gun fire. The mother of the loveliest family feels it for reasons too obvious to mention. "Would they trade all the art and culture of Europe for security ? At the drop of a hat. Would they give up friends, homes, business and country for security ? Like a beggar grabbing for a dollar bill". He goes on to say that this is the biggest thing that they want, with all its ramifications of freedom escape from persecution and the blessed right to be "agin the government" without the fear of jail, torture or death. "The little things that America means varies with age and personality", he writes, "the young think of big dance bands with their sure rythms, and will gather around a phonograph and play the same few records over and over again for an evening's entertainment. These have now been cut off and new records can't be secured. They think of real automobiles instead of the jerry-built gasoline savers they are cursed with here. And modern kitchens, pale blue baths and indirect lighting. "They think of real highways, skyscrapers that won't fall down, hotels with ice water taps, weeks on end without with-out meatless days, prices that don't jump every day, cheap clothes with expensive style, streamlined trains and a lot of other things they might never get but are there for the having or, at least, for the seeing". He declares that the older people think of things too, but they dream more of the free and easy life without regulations than just the comforts. They would like to write lations than just the comforts. They would like to write a letter to a friend without fear of censorship. They would like to go visiting in the next city without having to get permission from the police. They would like to have money that means something and isn't spit upon in the next country. They would like to make new friends and not lose them because of differing politics. He closes by saying that they would like to live in a country where every year, hard times or good, the standard stand-ard living remains on a fairly even keel. They would like to pick up a paper that has departments without a mention men-tion of politics or war and where the editor may still express ex-press his opinion in any way so long as he isn't libelous. And so, as the old year draws near to its close, we feel that we here in America should again voice our heartfelt heart-felt thanks that we live in a country that is the envy of the world; a country in which most of us do not have the smallest appreciation of our great good fortune at bein-one bein-one of its citizens. a |