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Show OCTOBER 7, 1950 NO. 19 News and Features of Interest to Residents of Davis County. NATIONAL NEWSPAPER WEE i I I The object you are now holding in your hand and looking at is a newspaper. Assume that this page was blank nothing written on it. Perhaps if you studied it and considered, a suitable editorial would evolve in your thoughts to find expression on the blank page before you. First you might remember that your fate and the fate of the newspaper you hold are tied closely together. In this respect the page might for a moment seem a mirror, with your own image reflected there. Closer thought and you are aware that it is indeed a mirror a mirror of inestimable power whose reflections carry more than mere physical images. Its pages capture and send back your hopes and fears, your convictions and your doubts. It is the reflection of the things in which you believe, an expression of the principles by which you live and which you would perpetuate through posterity. For it is a free newspaper, and you a free person. Just so long as the newspaper is free, and in that same degree, will your own freedom be an actuality. When oppression and thought control move in, it hits first at freedom of express- ion. Actually thought cannot be directed; the function of a person's brain locked inside his skull is beyond the reach of threat and coercion. It is, rather, the expression of these thoughts that first feel the chains of oppression. And a systematized program of channeling or directing expression is calculated to ultimately mould thought into a desired shape. This is the dark principal that while free thought it will will not topple before decree, eventually yield to fabricated Thus the newspaper, as the principal medium of expression, is the first to feel the blow when oppression strikes. free newspaper is as a mirror that reflects the beliefs and creeds of a free people. An oppressor's first task is to alter the mirror so that it presents a distorted image, until finally the situation is transposed, and the people have become the mirror that reflects the thoughts and theories of the newspaper. This is the ultimate achievement of thought-contro- l, as practiced in totalitarian countries. The newspaper you hold has little physical value a few cents worth of paper and ink but the principal it represents and embodies is valued out of the reach of dollars and cents. It is an instrument of free expression, and factual presentation, in a world of both fact and freedom where the arch-foe- s are on a terrible and menacing rampage. No dictate of law governs its presentation of news; no legislative fiat controls its expression of opinion. Its pages are at liberty to present the opinions of all, without limitation. Its main object is not to manufacture opinion, but to supply the raw materials the controversy and debate, happenings and developments that are evolved into opinminds of a people at ion in the liberty. You hold in your hand a free newspaper, which is but a reflection of your own freedom. Only so long as beliefs in the principals of freedom are firmly held in the heart and in the mind, will you be able to hold a free newspaper in your hand. Hold it firmly. National newspaper week, October is a good time to think about these things. A free-worki- ng 1-- 8, |