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Show WIIEN CIVILIAN TRIPS BECOME NECESSARY WATCHING THE WAR TIME GUESTS as they sit about the spacious spa-cious lobby of a Los Angeles hotel one wonders who they are, where they came from, why they are there and what they are thinking about. An old lady, evidently of rural America, takes the chair beside me. She wants to be talkative to relieve re-lieve her homesickness, she explains. ex-plains. I find she is the widow of an Iowa small town banker. She came to California to say good-by to an 18-year-old grandson who had, two weeks before, sailed across the Pacific Pa-cific as a member of a carrier's crew. "His father died three years ago, his mother five years ago, and he was my last 'chick'," she said. The grandmother had traveled to California in a day coach, as the only way she could get there, but did not feel able to return the same way. She could not secure a sleeper sleep-er reservation for at least another two weeks. The days seemed terribly ter-ribly long. She wanted so much to be back in her Iowa home, to see her pet cat, to wear a kitchen apron and have the company of her hometown home-town friends. That bit of conversation prompted another motherly soul to tell her story. sto-ry. She was in Los Angeles awaiting await-ing the arrival of a son, the youngest of four. "My baby," she said. He had been away four years. A captive cap-tive of the Japs on Luzon. Now he was coming home, and Bhe was expecting ex-pecting the arrival of his ship each day. Together they would go back to the farm in Minnesota, where his father and one brother were producing pro-ducing food for the nation. Two other sons were in Germany In the army of occupation. A young man wearing a sailor suit, with his wife and a small boy of some two years, frequented the lobby. The young wife told me she came all the way from Pennsylvania, Pennsyl-vania, so Jim, for the first time, could see his son. Jim had a 10 days' shore leave before his ship would again sail for the Jap infested infest-ed waters of the Far East When the 10 happy days were over she and the baby would return, as they came, by bus, to await the end of the war with the hope that Jim would return to them. Such were but examples of those found in that spacious lobby. lob-by. They were not vacationists; their trips were, to them, war-created war-created necessities. They had endured hardships of travel, the long waits for train accommodations, accommo-dations, the crowded hotel conditions, con-ditions, the financial sacrifices, that they might, to some degree, satisfy the heart longings the war had brought to them. The war had inflicted cruelties other than those of the battle fronts. The people, most of them, in that hotel lobby had not been lured to Los Angeles by the California climate, cli-mate, or a mere desire to go places. War had brought them. War har made their trips necessary. INTEREST OF HOME ALWAYS PARAMOUNT THE INTEREST IN, and sentiment senti-ment for, close to 100 per cent of the American people starts with the family and home, extends from there to take in the home town, the county, the state and the nation. Up to the time of World War I that sentiment and interest stopped at the national boundaries. We Americans Amer-icans saw in the aggression of the Hun in World War I a threat against those things In which we are directly direct-ly interested, and we took a hand. Followine that war a nereentnpp rf us believed we must extend our interests in-terests to cover the world, but that percentage was not great enough to force the ratification of the League of Nations Covenant. A second aggression ag-gression on the part of the Hun was an even greater threat than the first. From it we have realized that, like it or not as we may, we must extend ex-tend our Interests to a world wide scope. We are not isolationists, nor are we internationalists to the extent of surrendering any part of our sov-I sov-I ereignty. We have found we cannot safely stop at our national boundaries if we are to have protection for those things of importance to us. Wc are willing will-ing to take a hand in world affairs af-fairs that we may play safe for our more important interests, our family and home, our home town, county, state and nation. UNLESS JAPAN throws in the sponge in the near future the Jap heaven will be badly overcrowded. THE LATE Henry Cabot Lodge, then Republican senator from Massachusetts, Mas-sachusetts, is credited with the rejection re-jection of the League of Nations Covenant in 1920. He was the leader of the opposition, but he led more Democrats than Republicans. Few of us remember the vote that resulted result-ed In the rejection of that document. The fact is 28 Republicans and 21 Democrats voted to ratify, .while only 12 Republicans and 23 Democrats Demo-crats votrd against ratification. A twe-thirdf vote was needed for rati ficition. , . |