DE BUNKING TEXT-BOOKS
GOOD POSTURE
IS OUR DOOM PATERNALISM
Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas J. Dicksoi, senior cha: ain
of the A. E. F. in France, recently inspected 52 American
text-books containing accounts of the World War, prac
tically all of which he denounces as giving “distorted,
ridiculous, absurd and stupid” ideas of our part in that
struggle.
In th ese books our children are taught that the united
States soldiers won the war, and the impression is given
that they were superior to all other fighting men en
gaged. Such preetntsions, he says, unless corrected,
doom us to become the laughing stock of the world.
“We have a record any nation can be proud of,” Col
onel Dickson says, “and we don’t need to exaggerate
what we did or belittle the others—not even the Ger
mans.”
Unfortunately, writers of history text-books write
them primarily to sell, and they appear to think, jier-
haps correctly, that the greater the appeal to national
vanity the better the chance the books will have to be
adopted for school use. Hence many of these text
books give the impression that every American general
was a modern Alexander and every soldier another A r
nold Winkelried.
The truth is that while American soldiers have always
given a good account of themselves in battle they have
not been greatly different from other soldiers, all cir
cumstances considered. When properly trained and
equipped, the American soldier is the equal of any in
the world, and superior to many. Without such train
ing and equipment he is at a decided disadvantage, as
our own officers freely admit.
Much that passes for American history is as apocry
phal as the story of Washington and the cherry tree.
Chaplain Dickson has performed a patriotic service in
pointing out some of the bunk that is being taught un
der the guise of historical fact.
One of the simplest imd most effective methods of
bettering one’s health is by maintaining an erect pos
ture. Posture is an expression of the mental and phys
ical state; also posture may modify and control mental
states. The cultivation of a happy, cheerful, optimistic
nature more readily achieves results when efiorts are
also made to walk with an elastic, springy step, to hold
the head erect, and the abdomen flat.
In an erect posture’body muscles tend to remain taut,
and afford a proper support or pressure to the body in
cluding the circulation of large blood vessels. In a ha
bitual slouching posture the blood of the abdomen tends
to 'stagnate in the liver and the. splanchnic circulation
causing a feeling of despondency and mental confusion,
headache, coldness of hands and feet, and chronic fa
tigue or neurasthenia, and often constipation.
A good posture can not be maintained unless the mus
cles are kept strong by exercising. If the shoulder mus
cles are too weak to hold the shoulders in their normal
position the chest tends to drop in. If the muscles of
the back and abdomen are not strong the body slouches
forward.
It is not enough to have an erect carriage arid a well-
poised'head. We must also have well directed feet. The
foot in action should be placed on the ground with the
line of direction parallel to the line of movement. The
toes should point forward and neither be turned out
ward or inward.
Good posture pays because it improves the health, in
creases your economic value, gives you social standing,
and inspires you with the spirit that wins.
Therefore, "be it resolved that in 1927 I will establish
the habit of maintaining a good posture.—Oregon State
Board of Health.
Paternalism is a python skinning and swallowing our
free institutions in the shining jaws of officialism.
“ State, federal, city and county now maintain official
bureaus to merely record the birth of a child, and draw
salaries for doing it. The latest wrinkle is a birth cer
tificate mailed from the Department of Commerce, Bur
eau of Census. The citizen is warned of its great im
portance in all future affairs of life.
We are following in the wake of the most highly pa
ternalistic country in the world. Germany was backed
by militarism and officialism that kept a record of the
individual from the cradle to the grave .
How far the Children’s Bureau of the Census undpr
the Department of Commerce will carry its supervision
of the family no one knows.
The history of nations shows that the python of self
extending officialism grows by what it feeds on. Is it
crushing the free, independent citizenship of Our Coun
try in its shining folds?
A suitor, also, occasionally has a third party scare.
All the freaks are not on exhibition in side-shows.
A friend in need is a fellow who always has matches.
Some husbands don’t even dare to make a minority
report.
A Nebraska man stood his wife on her head and she
kicked.
Anyway, Czar Landis couldn’t send Cobb and Speaker
to Siberia.
A Chicago woman sued for divorce because she was
FARMING BY THE MOON
tired of living alone.
Sowing, reaping, breeding, butchering, shearing, and
other farm activities are regulated by many according The surest road to a good federal job is to fail of re-
HOW MANY SOULS?
to the “light” or “dark” of the moon. Such practices election to Congress.
Prof. Frederick H. Sears, eminent astronomer of Mt. are foolish and only relics of the Dark Ages, according
Judgment day will be a sad occasion for reformers,
Wilson observatory, has been making some interesting ■ to the Pepartment of Agriculture.
with
all their jobs gone.
estimates concerning the inhabitants of the universe, Farming according to the moon has no support from
which run into big figures.
any scientific point of view, as the moon has no influence A pessimist is disagreeable, but he gives less foolish
First, he notes that there are about 30 billion suns, ! on animals, the weather or the soil, though many old say advice than an optimist.
many of them immensely larger than our own, each of ings have led people into superstitious beliefs regarding
which has at least one world spinning around it, while it. In France, before the revolution there was a law Where there is a will there are always lawyers willing
to find a way to break it.
many have several, like our own solar system.
forbidding the cutting of trees between the new moon
The earth has an estimated population of about two and full moon.
A committee of judges, evidently not gentlemen, select
billion people, so if each of these suns has only one in Like many other fallacies which have gained wide ed a brunette as Toledo’s prize beauty.
habited planet and these planets average as many inhab currency among various peoples, these fanciful ideas
itants as the earth, it would mean that there are 60 are giving way before the investigations of science, but Jurors are bound by oath to decide in favor of the
uuintillions of living people. To write this i n ‘figures ages must yet elapse, perhaps, before superstition shall side producing the most convincing liars.
you have only to put down a 6 with 19 ciphers after it. be entirely eradicated from the minds of men.
Imagine the stunts Frank and Jesse James might
This estimate or guess, assumes! only the possible num
have pulled off with good roads and a high-powered car.
ber of people inhabiting the now visible universe. How We are not agitated over that new method of squar
many more suns there may be no one knows, and it is ing the circle, but an easy means of squaring debts Mussolini wants to visit America, but we warn him
that our gunmen are better shots than the lady who
not likely that a telescope will ever be made powerful would interest us mightily.
pinked his nose.
enough to discover them all.
But, taking the estimate as it stands, it refers only to A big male deer met and charged a Ford car on a; Mathematics professor committed suicide in Louis-
people now living. The number that have lived and died, Pennsylvania road, wrecking the machine in spite of ville with $29,000 in his pocket. Probably went crazy
and those who are yet to live and die are left entirely to the driver’s attempt to pass the buck.
j trying to count it.
the imagination. Supposing that all have or will have
immortal souls, it appears that there is little likelihood
of anyone’s getting lonesome in the hereafter, whatever
his destination.
Vale Brevities
TRIBUTES TO AKELEY
To the great mass of his fellow-Amerieans the name
of Carl Ethan Akelev was unknown, yet his recent
death as a result of hardships endured in African ex
ploration has called forth press tributes unsurpassed by
those accorded any man of his generation.
He was an intrepid explorer and big game hunter, an
earnest scientist, an accomplished artist, and probably
the greatest taxidermist in the world. His best speci
mens of wild animals are preserved in the American
Museum of Natural History in New York, mute testi
monials to his daring and skill.
At the age of 62 he was on his fifth trip into the wilds
of Africa when death overtook him in the Belgian Con
go. His thrilling experiences and escapes had been
many. He had survived the terrible African “black
watee fever;” he had recovered after being trampled by
an elephant; he had killd a wounded leopard with his
bare hands.
As the Arkansas Democrat so well says, “through the
efforts of such men as Akeley, millions of school child
ren, to say nothing of millions of parents, each day
learn more of life among the so-called lower animals,
and by that learning are better fitted to live their own
lives.”
Glenn Pounds, who recently com
pleted training in Seattle, is the
new barber in Carey’s shop.
H. R. Dunlap Away—
H. R. Dunlap, of the Vale Trad-'
ing company, left here Friday on
his way to San Francisco, where he
will spend the next month or so with
his wife and daughter.
In Highway Office—
C. H. Millering of LaGrande is j
working in the highway office at
the courthouse with J. E. Peck, state
engineer. Until this week he has
been working on the John Day in
Cow Valley.
Final Proof—
Vilas Walker of Pendleton made
final proof on his homestead in this
locality at the land office Wednes
day.. His witnesses were O. E. Car
man and John Morgan of Vale.
Supt. Cruil Away—
Mrs. E. M. Grail, county ach«ol
superintendent, is in Salem attend
ing the state convention of county
school heads. She is expected home
within a day or go. Charles accom
panied her to Portland.
On Central Oregon Survey—
J. E. Peck, state engineer, made
a trip to Harney valley last week
to look over the ground between the
Drewsey market road and Harney
valley, which will be surveyed soon
as a part of the Central Oregon
highway. The survey will be start
ed as soon as the weather moderates.
SCARING US TO DEATH
Clever advertising of intisceptics and other prepara
tions reputed to save us from all the ills to which the
flesh is heir has done a lot of harm, according to Dr.
Shaw, professor of philosophy at the New York Univer
sity.
While real science is relieving the human mind of
many former bugaboos, modern “fear factories” are J. D. Fairman Here—
manufacturing new horrors to alarm the gullible and J. D. Fairman, prominent banker
and merchant of Harper, attended
shorten their lives through sheer fright.
Just as we have been reassured by scientific control the meeting of the county court
Wednesday. The following day he
of yellow fever, small-pox, malaria and a host of oldtime returned
home. While in the city
dangers, along comes the killjoy tribe warning us of the Mr. Fairman told of receiving |
menace of dandruff, pyorrhea and halitosis. Quoting around $17,000 worth of turkeys ]
from the Westfall-Harper section
the good doctor:
“Man is tormented with an array of drug-filled reme for the Thanksgiving and Christmas
The interior farmers are
dies which are supposed to act as antiseptics. The bath markets.
also realizing the value of poultry
room becomes a clinic, and «very man a doctor in spite raising as a side issue to farming.
of himself. Now, dread in fhe heart is worse than dand
Hot Springs San—
ruff in the hair, and fear in the soul is more unsightly At Joseph
T. Barnes of Drewsey, is
than film on the teeth "
a newcomer at the Vale Hot Springs
To which we may only a^d. as the high school girl sanitarium. He is recuperating
would say, “Ain’t it the truth.”
from a general breakdown. After a
The average man who ^reives an income tax blank
is in much the same position as the fellow who when
asked if he could change a two dollar bill replied, “No,
but thanks for the compliment."—Baker Herald.
few days at the sanitarium, Mr.
Barnes says he is already feeling
much better. He praises highly the
hot mineral water, for which the
institution Is fast gaining an envi
able reputation.
,
,
BOOSTERS
What Are Boosters?
BOOSTERS are the Public Spirited men who are al
ways ready to stand back of the town in which they
live, whether he is a merchant, resident or a fanner
who calls that town home. A booster is a man who
wants to see his home town go ahead and is putting his
shoulder to the wheel in an effort to make it go ahead.
* Boosters Are Those Who Advertise
The newspaper in your community is the biggest
booster of them all. When some public enterpnse is
set afloat, the chances are ten to one that the local paper
was the biggest factor in the lot in bringing about its
accomplishment, so why not patronize the merchants
that are boosting your town and thereby become a boost
er yourself?
Check over the paper this week and see just who the
boosters inNyssaare—and they want your trade too be
cause they are asking you for it—THE’RE BOOSTERS.
Trade With Merchants Who Want
Your Trade
]
The Gate City Journal
NYSSA, OREGON