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Show Kathleen Norris Says: Let's Keep On Singing, 'Oh, Say Can You See?9 (Bell Syndicate WNU Service.) Washington's first congress ivas so half-hearted after the peace that teas made at Yorhtown, that it was hard to get a quorum together. By KATHLEEN NORRIS TWO great men were born in this month. Perhaps the greatest the world has seen for hundreds of years. In vain one scans the lists of famous names from China, India, Russia, Italy, France, Germany, England, to find a patriot, a statesman, a humanitarian humani-tarian with the vision and courage and patience that Lincoln and Washington Wash-ington possessed,' and whose fruits gave us the nation we are so proud to call our own today. There have been great soldiers, great prime ministers, in other countries. But few of them have combined with their governing qualities qual-ities the finer qualities of heart and soul. And few of them have had to face the personal and national perils that marked the careers of both our great men. They gave America that characteristic charac-teristic that no other nations claim. It is best called "humanitarianism." It is unique in the dealings of one nation with another, and that particular, par-ticular, element is what makes us different, and makes our history different. dif-ferent. We are not an aggressive nation. We are not seeking to dominate domi-nate other smaller nations and enrich en-rich ourselves with their treasure. No Indemnities Claimed. After any unpleasantness whether it be the great war of 1914-1918 or the Spanish war, or the injuries that were done us in China soma 40 years ago, we don't claim indemnities. indemni-ties. We pay for what we take, and after awhile give it back to its own people as a gift. If nations borrow money from us in extremities, we presently forgive them their defaulting default-ing of the debt, and a brotherly feeling feel-ing of sympathy in their fresh difficulties diffi-culties continues undisturbed. We are slow to make enemies among the nations because we are a composite com-posite of them all, the living example exam-ple of the truth that all men are brothers, and can live together in peace. No other nation does this or ever has done this. If one of them conquers con-quers a smaller or weaker people, that people lives under heavy taxation. taxa-tion. From that moment it is a people ruled by its military betters; it pays tribute; its wealth and its treasure are poured into the coffers of the victors. New World Era. Our history began, and a new world era began, when a few men opposed themselves to a supposedly irresistible and inexhaustible power, and risked their lives to defend the principle that men are fit to rule themselves. Washington's first congress con-gress was so half-hearted after the peace that was made at Yorktown, that it was hard to get a quorum together. to-gether. On all sides he met scorn, doubt, criticism, indifference. The influential people were the Tories, and they had every reason to feel, for the first dozen years of America's Ameri-ca's existence, that this ridiculous experiment in democracy was bound to ignominious failure. Two generations later it was for awkward, gentle big Lincoln to hold the country together, to keep us a nation still. The echoes of that bitter bit-ter struggle are still in our ears; we are still a very baby among the lations at the age of one hundred .tnd sixty-four. But we are the greatest of them all now, and hardly aware yet of our own potentialities for future greatness. We have our weak spots. Our neglect neg-lect of the financial safety of the old and helpless. Our strikes. Our dust-bowl emigrants and illiterate mountain folk. But the hopeful thing is that we know it, and in a fumbling fum-bling fashion are beginning to do something about it, rather than accepting ac-cepting want, squalor, a fearful infant in-fant mortality, disease, crime as a part of the plan of Divine Providence. Provi-dence. All Brothers. Our mixed blood is at once our hope and our menace. Our menace because when thousands of foreign-born foreign-born men and women are transplanted trans-planted to a new soil, it takes them several generations to develop a loyalty loy-alty to the new flag, and to learn to live in freedom and comfort. They see fortunes made by graft and theft, and they are tempted beyond any strength that the poverty and restriction of their old lives had power to give them. But year by year conditions and environment are improved, and in another few years say 150 or 200, this difficulty that comes from pouring old wine into new bottles will be eradicated, and we will become as law-abiding as we are strong and rich and powerful. pow-erful. Our Hope Here. Every woman who teaches her children the true history of America, Amer-ica, gives them some idea of the potentialities still ahead of us under our own Constitution, does her bit to hasten that happy day. The foaming yeast of mixed heritages, heri-tages, mixed blood, mixed ideals and customs may be our menace. But our hope springs from this very condition, too. The hope that we who are all neighbors; whose forefathers fore-fathers came from Germany, Italy, France, Spain as well as the two great streams from England and Ireland, may show the quarrelling peoples of the world that there is nothing irreconcilable in a difference differ-ence of blood. The lists of pupils in our schools show hundreds of names of Chinese, Japanese, Phili-pino, Phili-pino, Indian and colored children; every one of them a good American now. All are being blended and welded and reconciled under one flag, teaching and helping each other oth-er by their very differences as well as by their common education and town and way of living. Purchasing Power. When a Japanese or Russian family fam-ily living in Dakota wants a roll of cotton it goes to the dime store and buys it When a Florida Negro housewife needs maple syrup she patronizes her chain store. When a Maine farmer finds himself short of gasoline he stops at the nearest gas pump, and his brother in Arizona would never think of going to war for fresh salmon; he can't catch it, he is under-privileged in not having a salmon-run of his own. But he can buy it and buy it cheap, and so instead of mobilizing he puts his hand in his pocket. And his boys stay at home with him and their mother, and grow to manhood in safety, and marry and have farms and sons of their own in time and live in peace. One Hundredth the Cost. Why must nations own the sources of everything they need? Unless all nations are to be enemies that is an expensive and cumbersome idea. At one tenth one one-hundredth the cost of war any nation could buy as much oil or cotton or tin as she needed. This is so obvious that it is ridiculous to repeat it If all our states are small nations, as they are, acknowledging, in a crisis, the paternal wisdom of a central government, gov-ernment, and if in all these 48 individual in-dividual divisions of our nation every ev-ery nation in the world is represented repre-sented among the people, and in the local governments, which they are, and if we, in California, have a comfortable feeling that such essentials es-sentials as we haven't got are easily purchasable from our friendly neighbors, neigh-bors, then why in the name of God the God of peace and brotherhood, can't Europe do likewise? |
