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Show Kathleen Norris Says: Young America Needs Enlightenment Bell Syndicate. WNTJ Feature WW We are a great people. I think we ought to keep saying it, thinking think-ing it and impressing it upon our children. PATRIOTISM Prompted by the Fourth of July spirit, Miss Norris urges all Americans to proclaim pro-claim to the world that we are a great people. Not in a boastful, arrogant manner should we flaunt our virtues before others but we should not be reluctant to display self-confidence. Miss Norris suggests that perhaps the most important by-product of such conduct on our part would be the instilling in-stilling of confidence into our children. Many American Ameri-can youth praise foreign ways of living because they never have been sufficiently impressed with the tremendous tre-mendous advantages of Americanism. America does not have to be sold but all Americans should be educated to appreciate ap-preciate and be grateful for their priceless heritage which is the most envied in the entire world. By KATHLEEN NORRIS f-N THIS FOURTH OF JULY, above the fumes of firecrackers and political speeches and baking chocolate cakes and bunting and ice cream, there rises one solid inescapable in-escapable consideration: We are a great people. Some Americans think we shouldn't say that aloud. Perhaps it isn't the best taste when we are with less fortunate nationals. But here at home I think we ought to keep saying it, thinking it and impressing im-pressing it upon our children. Confidence Con-fidence and pride in America may be a valuable asset in the near future. fu-ture. The more we know of our history and its significance, the safer will be the whole world. A surprising number of Americans Ameri-cans are belittling America today. This is a situation that would have been hard for our forefathers to believe. Their loyalty, enthusiasm and faith came down to them straight from our beginnings. They knew our story. They honored the great men who had a share in it. But many of the younger generation genera-tion seem to have missed this birthright birth-right of pride and allegiance. Thousands of young Americans today will praise almost any other system of national government rather than our own. The less they know of it the surer they are that this foreign country or that is doing infinitely better than we are. Statistics upon the low rate of pay in other lands, the crowding, restrictions re-strictions and limitations, apparently apparent-ly have no weight. The argument that we Americans have reached the highest level of social comfort ever attained in this world, that we enjoy more luxuries, conveniences and amusements in one week than certain whole villages know in a year apparently has no weight Children Praise Foreigners Our children continue to praise foreign ideologies, to compare their ways to ours to our disadvantage, to give any casual disaffected lecturer lec-turer or magazine article their deep belief and admiration. Youngsters who never have seen Europe or the Orient will tell us, who have visited them more than once, of the ideal conditions that exist in the older countries. Instructors, whose entire knowledge of foreign systems of government comes from books written writ-ten by other theorists, teach our children to feel an affectionate and pitying contempt for America. America is the most educated, comfortable, free country In the world today! No, I am not speaking speak-ing of skyscrapers, automobiles, telephones, hospitals, libraries, colleges, magnificent music that comes to all of us through the medium of the radio, books and lectures, the kiddy cars and express ex-press wagons that litter the plainest plain-est little lawns before the plainest plain-est little cottages In our smallest towns. No, and I'm not speaking of our i freedom mine to write this; yours j to read it. Mine to go to church on I Sunday; yours to go on Saturday; j our neighbor's if he feels like it ; not to go at all. Our common newspapers' news-papers' right to say what they think. I'm speaking of our goodness. Our glorious, inexhaustible goodness, in- 1 spired by the only voice that ever spoke in a troubled world the voice of Jesus Christ. I'm speaking of our eagerness to help friend and j enemy alike, our pouring out of our riches for the less fortunate in a generosity such as the world never has seen or dreamed before. Old World Needs Us The old world, sunk in ijs own bitterness, wrecked by its own mistakes, mis-takes, depends upon us for life. And it will live. Staggering loans come out of your pockets and mine to stem Europe's and Asia's miseries of hunger and disease. Milk trickles through the complicated back roads of far-away lands to nourish starving starv-ing babies. We do it gladly. We cannot imagine ourselves doing anything else. But what other nation na-tion ever has done it? Europe comments upon our weaknesses. Like all young nations na-tions we display them; we aren't versed in the wisdom that hides the specks on the sun. We hear too much of our crime statistics, the illiteracy of certain mountain settlements, the immodesty of certain films, our waste, our extravagance, ex-travagance, our extremes. As if this fluff of scum bore any real proportion to the rich mass of the wholesome jam bubbling beneath! be-neath! Just one indication of our national na-tional character lies on my desk as I write or rather 20 indications do. They are the appeals that we Americans Amer-icans take for granted and that exist in no other country in such numbers and such diversity. When the people of our nation support crusades for infantile paralysis and tuberculosis stamps, for Boy and Girl Scouts, Red Cross, Indian missions, mis-sions, cancer study, heart disease prevention, rummage sales, church interests of all sorts, the Salvation Army, scholarships for Negro medical medi-cal students, children's homes, vacation va-cation camps, settlement houses and a thousand other humane and charitable movements to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars every year, they stand in a class by themselves. If the greatest of all laws is charity, char-ity, and we know that it is, then here again With so many other things is a truth about ourselves to make us proud of being Americans Ameri-cans on this Fourth of July. . . . more luxuries . . . Pity Prolongs Life CHICAGO. Pity your enemies rather than become angry with them and you will live longer, says an eminent heart specialist Dr. N. G. Gilbert, professor of medicine at Northwestern university, univer-sity, told volunteer workers in the Chicago Heart association's 1943 campaign to pity persons refusing to contribute but not to get angry with them. "Heart trouble may be incited by any emotion except pity," he said. |