Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1906-12-26
"The Whole Meaning of Nationality"


The foreign press has taken up the ques-
ton of amending our Constitution, and
some of it's strongest representatives
favor the proposition of calling con-
vention for that purpose. Hear the Lon
don Spectator:
1t was framed to provide safeguards
against dangers which long since dlsap-
peared. and to encourage certain forces
which today are more in need OF con-
troll.
The states are given wide autonomy;
th, nation is checked on every hand by
ultra wires provisions. This was Wen
enough so long as the states We're little
countries by themselves, cut off by eco
monte and social CULTS from each other'
But now that there are common prop
lens and common perils throughout 'ne
whole Union, to arm localities with op-
structiye powers is to play into the hands
of reaction and dishonesty and TO make
any continuous national policy impossi-
bile
THE people in America have scarcely
as vet erasped the whole meaning of ma
tionality The spirit wakes in them with
magnificent fire and energy at crisis
but they go back to their daily work
and forget about It,.
Have scarcely as yet grasped the whole
meaning of nationality? Why, the COM
plant in certain quarters over here is
that we have grasped that meaning so
HrmlN. our nOlO upon every liilliS tioO he'1
been Ioosened. The man-not always with
the clearest idea Of what he is talking
about-who claims to be IAN oldfashioned
Jeffersonan democrat will tell you that
within the past half century the country
has been torn from it's original mornings,
and is now headed under the guiding
hand of nationalism for the port of alb
solutism. Unless the course is changed he
sees nothing ahead but the complete per-
version of all the purposes for which the
fathers wrought.
lie and the Spectator are both wrong.
We are not the hardened natonalists that
the one pictures, nor the novice In the eX-
ercise of nationality that the other pic
lures We have been familiar with the
meaning of nationality for a great many
years; and what SO alarms AN old-fash-
toned Jeffersonian democrat is a matter,
not of yesterday, but of slow and gradual
growth.
1t is often charged that the civil war de-
stroyed state rights. AS a matter of fact
but one right claimed by some of the states
was destroyed by that struggle and that
was the right to secede from the Union.
That died the death, and state will
ever again assert it. Those that did assert
it, and lost, could not be brought to do so
now. So that what we then put under our
feet was something we could we'll afford to
part with.
If the state rights men were not in such
sore straits for a political issue, and thete-
fore hasty in their judgments, they would
recognize in Mr.. Root their best friend,
SO far from making an assault on state
rights and proposing their complete OBJ
liberation. he has called upon the states to
give better account of themselves; to ex-
ercise the rights they undoubtedly possess,
and not permit their citizens to run to Con-
gress for every remedy they need That is
the best advice possible in the premises.
A constitutional convention would clear
up a great many matters without imperil-
ing in the slightest the noble instrument
under which we have for so long been OPP
era iug. Why not call one?