The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1913-05-23
says UNCLE CAV

| A college professor who is long on
art and short on sentiment seems to
be responsible for a bill in congress to
| change the design of the ar-spang1ed
filed of blue that hdorns the national
| flag. The starry banner, he believes,
| is all right, except that it should have
| one big star, a lot of little ones, with
! a few red spots to indicate colonies.
| The chances are that he won't get very
| far with his scheme of artistic reform.
| In the first place, there are a few
unspoiled millions of Americans who
| still look up at the skies of a clear
night and observe that the present
arrangement of the stars on the flag
| which happens to be good enough for
them.
But that's only the first stump that
| our exuberant theorfst has to fall over.
Peterson, who left a part of his left
limb at Malvern Hill, and has been
more or less Of perpetual postmaster
at Puckyhuddle ever since. And from
Pegleg I got a little light on the sub
ject.
There's more, to a flag than some
fool, artistic hand-painted china de-
sign. Perhap= the man or woman who
looked up at the sky and got the in
SEPARATION for the old flag was little
shy on art. It's more'n likely he or
she had never been to college and
didn't know that the kind of lilies
that you see on patent medicine calen-
dars are prettier than those that grow
in the mud. 1t might be that there
was somethin' just q little inspirin' in
the loose an careless way that God
scattered the stars over the Sky-Just
sort of Spattered 'em against the blue
dome of heaven. Anyway, the bare
footed fellows that followed that ban
ner in the closi- days of the revolu-
ton probably like it better because
there was just a little mite of sug-
gestion in it that God was on their side
and if He wasn't helpin' 'em as much
as they liked, He didn't seem to be
dom a great deal for the bear, which
was the British.
"And know that, somehow or 9TH
err, we boys that marched away in the
sixties to fight for what we thought
was right didn't have any fault to find
with the flag because it hadn't been
designed by a graduate of the Chicago
Art institute. 1t was ours and we fit
for it-not for the nation, nor the
darby, but for the flag!
THAT means Someth1n, son-it
means somethin'i 1t means somethin'
to lay on the field with a bullet in
your lung and another in your leg, ana
see the flag waver, fall back and then
go on, carryin' the biggest kind OF a
cleanin' to the other fellows. There's
enough of US old boys left to tell con-
gress just what that means. II we
can't do it alone, there's a bunch or
husky young chaps who followed her
to Cuba and the Philippines to tell
that college professor somethin' about
leavin' flags alone.
''Save your improvements for the
navy, the postoffice department, riv-
ers and harbors and internal improve
ments. The material needs of the
times change with them. But TINS
nation don't need a new flag. The old
one stands for. too many battles, too
many defeats, too many victories, too
many wrongs righted, too much his
tory. My boy was proud to put on
khaki and jog away under the flag his
dad fought for. His boy may yet want
to do the same thing. 1t would not
seem right for him to have to dig up
an old one of the vintage of 1913 and
tell his kids that was the one his
granddad fought under"
Old Pegleg was right.
Deeds rather than designs make
flags.
The spirit of the nation, rather than
the arrangement of the stars, is the
thing that counts.-(Copyright, 1913,
the Mcclure Newspaper Syndicate.)