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Show COMMENTS WILL FREEDOM SURVIVE VICTORY Another year of the war has drawn to a close. Volumes of rhetoric will be written about the awful destruction of the past twelve months. Puny efforts will be made to describe des-cribe the suffering of the men of the armed forces, who face death day after day, year after year, far from their loved ones, Actually, there are no words that can adequately sum up 1944, the most critical year in American history. The astounding thing about the home front is the fact chat except for the families of service men, it lives normally and has no conception of the horrors of war. Communiques from Washington on the price of toilet paper or some other trivial item fill countless columns in the press. Social Security Sec-urity planing, "full" employment and dizzy talk of a con-, con-, tented postwar world, with all the worries assumed by a "benevolent government, arise from the American scene like haze from a swamp. Clear, unqualified thought on the subject sub-ject of personal freedom, is almost totally lacking. Millions expect the government to furnish them Jobs, to guarantee peacetime prices, to protect them from the insecurity inse-curity of competition. They should remember that the more they ask of government, the less freedom they will have. If government end by owning most of industry and employing employ-ing most of the people as well as regulating the lives of the remainder freedom becomes a mockery. As Robert S. Henry, eminent writer and historian, observes: "The right of nonconformity is ultimately the most important of human Tights, but I doubt if it can long exist independently of the right of private property. After all, the man who owns nothing, and has no hope of owning anything for himself, is Tinder a terrible handicap in expressing untrammeled individuality. indivi-duality. He is without a place for his foot to stand upon, in opposition to the conforming forces of the collectivist state. Our people could lose everything of material value as the price of victory in this war and still have a bright future. However let too much government destroy the freedom and hope of the individual to build again a!nd there is no future. The right of ownership is more important than ownership itself. |