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Show Be Warned! By RUTH TAYLOR Too often in our criticism of the ideologies of our enemies have we taken the standpoint that their's is a negative attack only. Because spreading greater danger, its greater great-er menace. The thing that it does, the cruelties that it perpetrates, are but the means to an end. We have been so intent upon the visible expression - the persecutions, perse-cutions, the savageries that we have glossed over the end toward which they were striving. We call their attacks, attacks upon the mind, but we do not realize how fully they are an attack upon our mental balance, even upon our sanity itself. Our safeguard against aggresion, our best safeguard against invasion of our way of life, is the unity, the de-selectivity of our people. True, the Nazis all the totalitarian totalitar-ian despots in fact fight for us by trying to stir up trouble among the groups of our populace, setting class against class, color against color, creed against creed. But they do this not just to cause trouble amongst us but to destroy our personal integrity. .: As long as we hold to our ideals, we are safe. As long as we have by the principles embodied in the ' Constitution and the Bill of Rights, we are safe. As lolng as we havve the spirit of men working together togeth-er for the common good, we are invincible If they could destroy our virtue, we would collapse. And it is at our virtue that the attack is made not in a frontal assult, but with the same sniping tactics they used upon the democracys of Europe. If we are unfair to our own minorities, min-orities, if we mistrust our fellow Americans, if we are spurred on to demanding special rights and privileges for our own group they could win. As Archibald MacLeish so potently po-tently said: "They have used raci- al hatreds not for the sake of racial hatreds but to destroy the moral order without which the democratic world cannot survive." Let us face clearly the fact that our adversaries are not only brilliant bril-liant fighters on the battlefield but also on that other battlefield which is in our mind. If we cannot put aside prejudice, self-interest, selfishness, mistrust there we are betrayed by the enemy. Let us be warned. Let it not happen here! |