THE UNITED AMERICAN
Page Ten
EDITORIAL
NEEDING UNCLE SAM
117 HILE there is no outstanding reason for believing
* • that Japan, or any other power, has strong desire
to occupy the Philippines it would be unsafe to set the
islands rudderless upon the sea of independence. The
probability is that a short era of muddling self-rule
would be climaxed by alien occupation.
The American commerce in the Orient finds a base
in the Philippines, which are exceedingly valuable to the
United States. But what may be best for the United
States is not so important as what will be best for the
Philippines.
It is safe to say that the best interests of the
Filipino dovetail with particular American military and
commercial advantages. In exchange for the Philip­
pines as a strategic Pacific base, with wood and rubber
for which there is a good market in the United States,
the Filipino has found security and stability in his white
brother’s helping hand. Then, too, he has been bene-
fitted by the absence of tariff on his exports of sugar,
tobacco and hemp to American shores. Greater than
these commercial dividends from America, coopera­
tion has given educational assistance. The average
native resident of the islands, accustomed to a standard
of living based on a ninety-dollar annual income, is be­
ing trained by American educators for a more prosper­
ous and more satisfactory life. The Filipino has much
to learn before he is ready to take over the reins of
government. There is profit in it for him to remain
loyal to his benefactor and leave the foreign group-
agitators in the islands out of the political business of
the islands.
SPEAKING TO THE POINT IN TENNESSEE
T N NASHVILLE, Tennessee, there is a farm-journal
1 editor who in his pulication, the Southern Agri­
culturist, delivers treatises, on the products of the soil
and how it may be cultivated in order to obtain the
greatest return for toil. This publicist evidently found
time to “take in” the recent evolution battle fought
down in that state, judging by an item we find in his
publication for July, in which this specialist in farming,
in digressing from his specific topic in writing, has
this to say:
We should feel ourselves faithless to the children of
Tennessee, and of the other States in which similar laws are
threatened, if we did not protest against it. On this page,
when the law was being considered by the State Legislature,
we said that its enactment would be a crime against the
children of the State and against the spirit of religious
liberty which inspired this Republic at its founding. The
truth of this saying will yet be recognized, even in Tennessee.
For despite all the sophistries of Mr. Bryan and others who
uphold it, it is not simply an exercise of the State’s power
to say what shall be taught in the public schools—a mere
matter of determining the curriculum to be offered the children.
Every man who can reason knows, as a matter of fact, that
it is an attempt to tell the teacher not what to teach but
how he shall teach.
With all the eloquence of the late champion of
fundamentalism, William Jennings Bryan, and with
utmost respect for his sincerity, of which there can
SEPTEMBER 1925
hardly be doubt, the editor of the Agriculturist
has a margin for his contention which cannot easily
be gainsaid. He points out that neither Jefferson
nor his rival John Adams, were they alive today,
would be qualified under the law to teach school in
Tennessee. And the same statute would disqualify
such eminent men as Emerson, Channing, Horace
Mann and Charles W. Eliot.
The modern legislators who draft such statutes
have clearly different viewpoints than those we find,
for instance in Thomas Jefferson’s Virginia statute
providing for Religious Freedom.
Oregon has nothing on Tennessee, however, for we
have any number of past and present legislators whose
records show that they are ready to attack some Ameri­
can principle of liberty at every turn of the road.
Isolation may have something to do with it both
in Tennessee and in Oregon, but we are very suspicious
that it is a serious manifestation of atavism—the
recurrence of the character of remote ancestors in their
present day descendants.
“THE LAZY HABIT OF WIRELESS”
W HAT HE describes as “the lazy habit of wireless”
is strongly denounced by a clergyman, Rev. A.
Cuming, Addlestone, Surrey, England, in his parish
magazine. The empty church pews, the vicar states, is
the result of the radio which enables the parishioners to
hear the sermon without going to church. On this
subject he makes this specific point:
Anybody who thinks he can worship God by lolling back
in an easy arm chair and listening by radio to the singing of
the choir at So-and So’s or the oratorial effects of the ‘Bishop
of Kamchatka,’ is living in a fool’s paradise. True worship
demands sacrifice. People too lazy to go upstairs and put their
things on and come to the House of God on God’s day, are
grossly neglecting their duty. We must face the fact that in
wireless has been found another powerful recruit added to
the phalanx of counter attractions to keep the people out of
the churches.
If such is the case the clergyman should appeal
to his brethren of the cloth to refuse broadcasting
their sermons and church services, which in a short
time has become an institution in modem countries.
The plan of broadcasting church services and sermons
may be bad for lazy church members, but it is a good
way to reach the masses, those who never go to church,
and an excellent means by which to reach some narrow
church people with a spiritual message they otherwise
would never hear because they would never be seen
going into the church where the particular sermon was
preached, due to their denominational prejudices.
Perhaps there again is to be found some truth in
the saying: “nothing is so bad that it isn’t good for
something.” On the other hand it may be said, as in
this instance, that nothing is so good that there isn’t a
chance for some evil to develop from it.
FAITH AND PRAYER
P ACH NIGHT for six years, Mr. and Mrs. William
Hill of Habersham County, Georgia, prayed for
the return of their life savings: two thousand five
hundred dollars, the proceeds from the sale of their
farm which a bunco artist in Atlanta got away from
them upon their arrival in that metropolis.
A confidence man was Doc Gray who met the aged