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Show fe' OPINIONS OF 3 THE PRESS ight) The Somerset (Penna.) Daily siidij American (Republican) s) . . The coal operators are get-M get-M fag a trifle anxious. They want i to know what Mr. Lewis wants , J 0f them, a secret which he has eoarded carefully down to now. Jft e says that he will not tell them until they agree to accept 1 his "royalty" plan for the J "health" and "welfare" of the Uwj mine workers. Meanwhile, Mr. t Lewis doesn't even let them I know the details of his "royalty" JdJfund.... ..... U tThe Cut Bank.. (Montana).. Pio-.j Pio-.j neer Press (Republican) es&'A Wrong Attitude Toward Po-alitical Po-alitical Participation ' One day this week a Minneapolis Minne-apolis paper reported that the leader of a women's political organization or-ganization had invited the heads of three church organizations, Lutheran, Catholic and Jewish, to appear and give their views on measures for political better- i ment. The published report revealed no new ideas. The opinions advanced ad-vanced were over-pietistic and in all ' the talks there was the covert suggestion of a sneer at politics and politicians; there m was the obvious intimation that jj 'participation in politics was a 7 sordid business. After the last speaker said he didn't believe in 3i political parties and voted inde-a inde-a pendently, the three wrapped J3 their virtuous garments about K them and departed from the f meeting. Possibly many of you have read, in newspaper forums, let- I ters from parents who take the same attitude. They say in sub- ,i stance that they do not wish Z their sons and daughters to take part in politics because of its dis- : i honesty and grossness, its schem-ings schem-ings and Strategems. My own thought is that instead in-stead of saying this they should be saying something like this: "I want my sons and daughters to take an active part in politics for the same reasons that I'm willing that they should go to war for their country, for the preservation preserva-tion of our present democratic order and with the hope of making mak-ing this order still better. I know it isn't perfect but I want them to do theJx part in helping make it better." We should take a leaf out of : the British book. Over there the I "real people," the leaders of thought, the wealthy and the titled, titl-ed, as well as the less favored, consider political education and political activity as things to be encouraged and regarded in the light of duty and honor. In all their educational institutions insti-tutions this concept is said to be given great emphasis and young men of wealth and leisure are urged to "stand" for seats in the Commons and engage in verbal jousts with those in the commoner common-er walks. Career diplomacy is given great emphasis and this is doubtless one of the reasons why this little island in the Atlantic, broken off from Europe's mainland, main-land, has been able down the years to keep domination over vast areas of the world and to more than hold its own with nations na-tions many times larger and more resourceful in a material sense And lets just take a little look at the type of men who are headlined head-lined in British political leadership. leader-ship. First of course, Churchhill, descendant from the Marl-boroughs, Marl-boroughs, man of letters, soldier statesman of the first order. Anthony An-thony Eden, wealthy aristocrat, Lord Halifax just now a guest of our own state dozens of lesser less-er figures in the aristocratic mold. And now, at the head of legislative affairs is Bevin, up from the ranks of labor and seemingly able to match minds with the ablest of world diplomats. diplo-mats. Britain is proud of all of them, doesn't hold its nose .or draw its skirts closely about itself it-self and squeamishly declare that politics is a dirty business. I'd like to see our own country slant its thinking toward encouraging encour-aging our youth to regard political politi-cal participation as Britian regards re-gards it and not to affect a sick-ish, sick-ish, superior attitude toward it. I would encourage the young men and women of the nation to be ardent republicans or ardent democrats, to remember what the great Oxford scholar, Erasmus, Eras-mus, said in one of his letters to Luther, 4T will work to cleanse the weaknesses of the church on the inside and then defend it on the outside." But if the climate of one party, its principles and policies didn't continue to square with their convictions, they should feel free to cross over and join the one that more nearly squared with these convictions. Above all, I'd discourage nonsense non-sense about thinking it is smart and superior to proclaim political independence, about detachment from partisan politics. Politics, it is a banality to say but let us say it anyhow, is government; gov-ernment; government is or ought to be the concern of everybody, and there's no good substitute known or so far revealed, for a two-party system, with one party eternally watching, checking, auditing the other. |