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Show M The Fall Of The Bastile EVERY year on the 14th of July the people of Paris celebrate "The Fall of the Bastile." H - The Bastile was a prison in which many H people suffered and died. On the 14th of July, H 1789, it went down before the rage of the prole- "f BBft to - vi M . j iu --3M-J tariat, and the First French Republic was born. Now for many years the French people have celebrated the anniversary of that day, holding it as commemorating an epoch, out of which ancient an-cient despotisms passed away and the star-eyed goddess of Liberty came to make her home in France. On that day the most gifted orators are called upon to give voice to the people's rejoicing, re-joicing, the Marseillaise is sung, and with grateful grate-ful tears the French people watch and listen, for to them the day signals the date df their deliverance. deliv-erance. Sometimes we smile as we read the accounts of the extravagant demonstrations, but, after all, is not the world engaged more now in bringing about the fall of bastiles, than ever before? The Bastile represented the culmination of tyranny, cruelty and insolent power. Do not those sinister agents rule most of the world still? And is not that much of the world that is enlightened working today to cause the fall of bastiles in every land? They employ many agents. The little red schoolhouse is one. The press if it were everywhere in incorruptible and brave hands would be another. Indeed, if the press could be so guided, it would be enough in itself to tear down all bastiles and to redeem the world. The original Bastile was built of stone and iron; within it were machines of torture and of death, and the human keepers were as cruel as the soulless implements of iron and of wood. The Bastile went down, but the implements imple-ments in other" forms still fill the hearts of many men. But now all around this old world the spirit of Liberty is moving. We hear its cry in pagan lands, where it was silenced for thousands of years; in China, in Persia, in Turkey, in Russia, Rus-sia, the borders in the mid Asia are invoking the word, and the long suppressed manhood and womanhood wo-manhood of those lands are calling for a new dispensation. dis-pensation. We ought not to forget that the real enemy of progress toward the light is ignorance. It i3 upon the ignorance of the people that the de-spoilers de-spoilers have always preyed. Cow a man with superstitious fear and you make him a slave. Give an ignorant man position, and cruelty, and tyranny will as surely crop out in him as fate. In the thoughts of myriads of people liberty simply means license, and so it is a misnomer for them to use the word. But when a man learns the real truth that liberty is his due, but that means liberty under the law, and his education along those lines is complete. That is the education edu-cation that the American people, as a whole, most need. It has to be taught in the school of patriotism. The fact that our country is worth dying for if necessary, and that its laws must be obeyed by all its children. That is what the American people need to have impressed upon them in every town and hamlet, and when that knowledge enters into their hearts our last bastile bas-tile will have fallen. |