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Show oo OPIE READ PRAISES MORMON LEADER Salt Lake, 'April 21. Opie Read, author, journalist and lecturer, was a visitor in Salt Lake yesterday, and will leave Salt Lake early today for the southern part of the state to fill a Iecturo engagement. At the Hotel Utah laBt night to newspaper men and others he discussed in his inimitable style politics, religion, economics, race development, war and many other subjects. sub-jects. Incidentally he spoke much praise for Utah and Salt Lake Cltv, and declared that recent study of Brig-ham Brig-ham Young had convinced him the Mormon leader was one ot tho greatest great-est statesmen to bo found in the history his-tory of this country. Mr. Read pralBed Brbsham Young for his encouragement of agricultural pursuits especially. He Bald he also admired the leader for his general constructive ability. "Recently in my travels I was looking look-ing over a portion of tho Santa Fe trail in tho southwest," said Mr Read "And it occurred to me that all tho gold the men got who rushed madly west, and thereby made that trail, would not pay for one single crop that is now raised on the ground which that trail traverses. Yet those men, with their eyes on the gold, never saw the agricultural opportunities as they dashed on to California. It was different dif-ferent with Brigham Young. His head was not turned by the gold rush. H9 kept his people at agricultural pursuits." pur-suits." Mr. Read said he had recently met William Jennings Bryan on the lecture platform on several occasions, and had taken occasion to tell Mr. Bryan that he did not agree with the "peace at any price" policy. Mr. Read be lieves in preparedness, and declared that those who were making political Issues of the present crisis, Mexican and European, made him exceedingly angry. "It is a question of whether we want to be a victorious people or mere groveling humanity," said Mr. Read. "If we adopt the peace at any cost policy we will be nothing more than groveling humanity. And in a crisis like this there Is only one thing for all of us to do stand behind the president presi-dent whether wo agree with him politically politi-cally or not. Even though we may feel that he has made some diplomatic mistakes, wo must remember that he is our president, and we've got to'sup-port to'sup-port him now." In the event of war, Mr. Read believes be-lieves the United States will have considerable con-siderable internal trouble with German-Americans. - Mr. Read looks for such trouble in Chicago, where he makes his home. However, he said he dia not believe many. Germans who really professed to be Americans would be disloyal to this government in the event that war was declared against Germany. |