The Northman., April 29, 1920, Page 9, Image 9

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THE NORTHMAN
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The American Legion
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WHEN the United States entered the
late war the all-pervading sentiment
was “Honor to those who lay down their
work to go forth and fight to make the
world safe for democracy.”
Men from all walks of life left their
positions to go to the front—men promi­
nent in the professions and in business
life as well as from the factories, mills and
farms. Individual interests were sub­
merged in the common cause of the
service. There was no asking of “What’s
there in it?” Compensation was nothing.
Service was everything. They went to
the front with the spirit of purest patriot­
ism and they did not lose any of it in the
service.
The history of the world furnishes no
parallel of achievement. At no time in
the history of the world have men of all
races, creeds and nationalities been welded
together in so great h unit upholding a
common cause. They went forth and con­
quered and they returned—some of them,
not all.
It was heralded far and wide that the
men who served should, on their return,
find their old places open to them in ap­
preciation of their patriotism and some­
thing in the way of compensation for
their sacrifices. Some did—a few.—There
were some at home whose word was good.
All honor to them! But for the most part
the returning boys found the business and
industrial world too busy in pursuit of
the golden calf to give them a second
glance. Their places had in a large part
been filled. New men had been broken
in and they could not stop to make a
change, and so on. Men in the professions
found their practice absorbed by those
who had been their competitors ineligible
for service.
From this situation the men of the
overseas army turned to each other for the
contact of elbow to elbow and shoulder to
shoulder which had carried them through
the hell of war—turned to each other for
the strength needed for the struggle of
peace to reestablish themselves in the in­
dustrial order of the country.
Measures pending in congress looking
toward a small measure of compensation
for the sacrifices made, are being met
with opposition from the I. W. W. making
tax-slackers and business buccaneers of
the country whose ideals are interpreted
by the goddess of liberty, but only in the
significance in which she appears on the
American dollar.
The need for lending aid, comfort and
support to the A. E. F. and the ideal for
which this country entered the titanic
struggle in Europe did not pass with the
inauguration of the armistice-
Mutual obligations still remain and will
always remain.
mitted it. He inherited estates, filled a
multitude of government places, and used
his power and rank for ignoble purposes
without shame-
With the lower classes wretchedness
reigned. So deplorable was their condition
that eminent writers insisted that a war
which killed off, say, 50,000, of the poor
was a blessing in disguise to those who
ceased to suffer as well as to those who
survived. Such a thing as improving the
condition of the common people was re­
garded as the vagary of dreamers. The
simple purpose of the poor in life was to
be bom, work for their betters, and die off
when and how it best pleased his lordship.
With all its brilliance of romance, gold
lace, brave men, fair women, fashion and
gallantry, it was an agreeable world to the
upper crust but a most cruel and crusty
one for the hungry, helpless, down-trod­
den, broken-spirited mass seething and
suffering below.
Since then democracy has made won­
derful strides forward, but reforms have
been granted, not because they were
acknowledged to be right but because they
have been wrung from the unwilling hand
of privilege. We understand more about
human rights today than the world ever
knew before, yet injustice is still with us
in such strength in certain positions that
even now few have the courage to raise
their voices in protest. We consider with
impatience the rate of progress, for it
seems the world should rise and sweep
away these relics of the dark ages, and yet
when we stop to consider we see that de­
mocracy has moved with amazing swift­
ness during the period mentioned. At the
same rate of progress what mind can con­
ceive the reforms that the next century
will usher in?
There is no argument against the build­
ing of good roads.. Difference of opinion
may arise only regarding the manner of
providing the means or the manner in
which they should be built. The roads
Caesar built constitute a monument to his
memory useful, profitable, serviceable,
beneficial and consequently sensible. Build
the best roads engineering genius of the
day can construct- They are the cheapest.
PROGRESS OF DEMOCRACY
T OOKING BACKWARD a century and a
half, a period so brief that it may be
bridged by old people recalling the stories
of other people they knew when they were
young, we are impressed by the tremen­
dous change that has taken place-
The patrician was then at the height of
his glory and good fortune in the old world
as well as in the new. Society recognized
his superiority, and he, himself, freely ad­
DR EMIL ENNA
PRESIDENT OREGON COMPOSERS SOCIETY.
BOLSHEVISM THE HOPE
OF “ROYALTY”.
Hall Caine, the famous British author
and publicist, after a three months’ tour
of the continent and visiting various
asylums of “royalty” has issued a state­
ment in which he says the dethroned
autocrats are building their hopes on
Bolshevism as the path by which they
may again return to power.
Official reports to Washington state
that conspirators in the Turkish National­
ist movement have been in conference with
German Communists and emissaries of
Lenin and Trotsky at Munich, the purpose
of which is the organization of concerted
revolutionary movements in Turkey,
India, Egypt, Persia and elsewhere, and
Moslem delegates from India, Persia,
Azerbeijhan, Afghanistan and Egypt were
said also to have participated in a recent
conference with Lenin in Moscow.
The Munich conference has been called
to forge further links in the international
chain of revolutions, preliminary steps
toward which were taken at the Moscow
conference. In aid of the movement, re­
presentatives of Lenin at Munich are re­
ported to have promised the Turkish and
German conspirators 200,000 Russian
Bolshevik troops.
If these reports are true, it must be ap­
parent to even the blind that the soviet
leaders are not devoting their efforts
toward leading Russia out of the wilder­
ness of anarchy and despair, but are
playing the Napoleonic game of world
politics for all there is in it.
IS THAT DAY DISTANT?
X7TCTOR HUGO was relying on a speedier
V fulfillment of his dreams of a civiliza­
tion that will be superior to settling quar­
rels by the sword when he made this
phophecy at the peace congress of 1849:
“A day will come when you, France—
you, Russia—you, Italy—you, England—
you, Germany—all of you, nations of the
continent—shall, without losing your dis­
tinctive qualities and your glorious indi­
viduality, blend in a higher unity and form
a European fraternity, even as Normandy,
Brittany, Burgundy, Lorraine, Alsace, all
the French provinces have blended into
France.
“A day will come when war shall seem
as absurd and impossible between Paris
and London, between St. Petersburg and
Berlin, as between Rouen and Amiens, be­
tween Boston and Philadelphia. A day will
come when bullets and bombs shall be re­
placed by ballots by the universal suffrage
of the people, by the sacred arbitrament
of a great sovereign senate, which shall
be to Europe what the parliament is to
England, what the diet is to Germany,
what the legislative assembly is to France.
“A day will come when a cannon, ball
shall be exhibited in the museums as an
instrument of torture is now, and men
shall marvel that such things could be. A
day will come when shall be seen those
two immense groups, the United States of
America and the United States of Eu­
rope.”
A man may be a mighty good American
without knowing a word of the language,
but chances are a thousand to one that
something or somebody will spoil him if
he doesn’t learn, not only to understand
and speak the language but to read and
write it understandingly.