The Alaska citizen., 1916-06-12
PATRIOTISM.

ness only in terms of ships, troops and munitions. Equal attention must be paid to the state of American patriotism and American manhood. A sound plan of national defense must dig down to the very well springs of national life, and build upon unity love of country and virility
 For more than year the world has heard England call for fit men, and has watched far-flung program of military preparedness shattered by strikes, refusals and sullen in difference. Sa red promises of aid and protection have crumbled while officers sweated in training camps trying to make soldiers out of pov- i erty-stunted weddings During the same period Germany has flooded
 the continent with singing millions capable of all endurance.
 | It is not a question that has to do with sympathy, but a cold blooded comparison of two methods of pre- paredness. Germany has done the | things that England has not been able to do. because Germany, more than any other nation, has made the welfare of the individual citi- zen the concern of the state, mani festing protective and continuous in terest in his life health, education and future Government in Ger many is not sovereign power detached, aloof and magisterial- but a working partnership with the people for the promotion of pros perity.
 Forty-five years ago two-thirds of all the labor in Germany was com mon and one-third skilled Today one-thrd only is common and two thirds are skilled. Annual incomes 1 have been increased materially; the death rate has been reduced to the
 minimum and the birth rate in creased to the maximum; and as for illiteracy, it is less than one per cent, as against 10 per cent in the United States.
 The problem of the unemployed
 has been solved in a large measure, and scientific methods have in creased the productiveness of every acre on an average of 85 per cent. | Over 48 per cent of all revenue is gained from profits, thereby cutting
 the taxes Of the people in half For more than thirty years Ger. many has maintained it's system of sick and old-age insurance, yet in the United States these propositions are still fought as radical. AS a consequence 75 per cent of the ! population dread the future, and in the city of New York one out of every twelve corpses is buried at public expense or turned over to ! physicians for dissection.
 Three-fourths of the wage earn, CTS in the United States earn less than $500 a year, a census fact that tells it's own story of low standard of living Nine states only have given attention to minimum wage legislation.
 Unless the wreckage of industry
 is cared for by industry itself, the maimed and dependent must be housed in an increasing number of hospitals, orphan asylums, jails and state homes, to the end that inde- pendence and self-reliance are crush ed, and unbearable burdens im- posed upon taxpayers. Thirty states only have adopted workingmen's s compensation laws. In eight states the outworn doctrines of fellow-ser- wants and assumed risk still hold. and in seventeen the abrogation ap- plies only to railroads. Bismarck conceived this plan in 1884
 These are questions of vital i'm portance that must not be over looked in the clamor for prepared ness. If we would have our coun- try ready for any great struggle we must so direct legislation and development as to make all classes prosperous and contented. The standard of living must be raised and conditions of labor improved. We must provide against unemploy- ment. recognizing, as Bismarck did fifty years ago, that every man has a right to work, as we'll as duty. Old age and sickness and accident must be robbed of their terrors by
 social insurance, and equal justice and equal opportunity must become the goals of new order.
 When these reforms are enacted then the people will think more of what they owe their government and will feel the spirit of true pat
 riotism.
 TT ia SuppeStad hy admirerC of