| OCR Text |
THAT FLAG. At a meeting of the Daughters of the Pioneers, a week ago, President Joseph F. Smith repeated an old story in these words: "It is a memorable fact that men who had been driven from state to state on their first entrance in the valley hoisted on Ensign the stars and stripes and took possession of the new commonwealth com-monwealth for the United States." It is a memorable fact if true. President Smith only knows it by hearsay. The first question ques-tion that the statement awakens is "Where is that flag?" Who among the old Pioneers ever saw it? There surely never was a people who hated a government more than those in that first company com-pany of immigrants to Utah, hated the United States government. They thought this was Mexican Mex-ican soil. They were striking out for an independent inde-pendent state. A diligent search of the history of those people will, we think, fail to find in those days one word of loyalty to the government of the United tSates. Twenty-two years later they trailed the flag of the United States in the dust of Salt Lake streets. Is it not the truth that when they came they had little flags of half a dozen different nations, including one little flag of the United States; that they had a celebration and weaving these flags together set them up merely as a symbol of their all-embracing kingdom? Such a story has come down the years side by side with the other. Has it not the more probable look of the two? |
