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Show WHEN WORDS ARE TWISTED. There are writers who are constantly drawing fine distinctions in the use of words, and in so doing arc ignoring generally accepted definitions. We have before us an article by Harry F. Atwood, in which the following occurs: It is a rather startling statement, but it is an indisputable fact, that during all the thousands of years prior to the writing of our constitution and the founding of this republic, tnere was no government to which the historian could point and truthfully say, "There was a government that worked well." Now, uhile that is an unusual statement, it is just as true os it would be if I should say that prior to the evolving of the ten digits, there was no system of mathematics to which the historian could point and truthfully say, "There was a system of mathematics mathe-matics tht worked well." During ill those thousands of years the pendulum of government govern-ment was swinging back and forth from one extreme to the other, just as it has done recently in Russia and is now doing in Germany, swinging back and forth from the extreme of autocracy, autoc-racy, which has always resulted in tyranny, to the extreme of democracy which has always rerulted in chaos. Since that word has been used so frequently and so much during dur-ing recent years, I want to pause just long enough to say that t is an innovation in the life of this country to refer to oui government gov-ernment ps a democracy. Up to nineteen years ago we scarcely, I might almost say never, referred to our government as a democracy. de-mocracy. The men who founded this government w?re more fearful of democracy than they were of autocracy, and said so just as clearly as I am talking now. What a strained effort at discrimination! Democracy means the strength of the people or the rule of the people. If ihis nation is not ruled by the people, then it should be. In defining "democracy," Webster says: "Government by the people." What did Lincoln say as to a government of the people, by the j people, for the people a government which should not perish from I the earth? The dictionary further defines a democracy to be : "A foim cf government in which the supreme power is retained by the people ?.nd exercised directly, or indirectly through a system of representation and delegated authority periodically renewed, as in a j constitutional representative government, or republic, it is distinguished distin-guished from aristocracy. ' It is now .n order for an alarmist to start the cry that America is in danger of becoming a democracy and not a republic. What a twist- ! ing of words and what a conjuring up of ev lis could be worked out by clever agitators. |