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Show oo WHAT'S AN AMERICAN? ANSWER. Baltimore wants an answer to tho question: What's an American? R. W. Kauffman, the famous editorial edi-torial writer, commenting on this, says : "The city of Baltimore has just announced an-nounced that it will pay any American Ameri-can one thousand dollars for tho best answer. Long ago, when you and I were in tho grammar school, they toUi us how Francis Scott Key, a prisoner aboard an enemy ship near Baltimore wrote "The Star Spangled Banner," but I doubt if we often realized what, it meant to him. I doubt if we understood under-stood how he prayed through the night for tho flow of our ebbing national life, and how the words of that song, bursting burst-ing forth with dawn's disclosure of the flag "still there," were In reality the words of the entire American republic repub-lic You and I hadn't then been in a country where war broko out. We hadn't seen tho hurrying men, the frantic fran-tic women trying to be calm, the stern purpose and the wide disorder. Now things are different We are getting back to essentials. We aro again becoming be-coming vocal. We are trying to tell what we stand for. We say: 'I bo-Hove bo-Hove in right thinking.' 'I believe in right fighting.' 'I believe In right dying.' dy-ing.' All for the flag. They're creeds, in their way, those ejaculations. But the hour is coming when they must bo moulded Into one creed into tho kind of thing that, once It's heard, everyone of us will say: 'That's what I've been believing all these years.' And Baltimore Balti-more will pay $1,000 to the man that moulds it" Now, if the readers of the Standard would capture the prize, they must carefully prepare a Credo, and send their offerings Before September 14, to "Committee on Manuscripts," 31-33 East Twenty-Beventh street, New York City. |