Evening capital and Maryland gazette. (Annapolis, Md.) 1910-1922, 1917-08-17
KENT ISLAND
What Others Think OF 1t As :'The One
Spot For Army Proving Ground.

The following from the New York
Globe is of especial local interest:
II seems curious that Kent Island,
Md, is the one spot east of the Miss
issippi that the War Department can
find to succeed outgrown Sandy Hook
as a proving ground for our artillery.
But the statement of the War Depart
ment is explicit: "In the search for
suitable site a most exhaustive sur
vey was made of all the country east
of the Mississippi river, and the only
site found to meet the irreducible re-
qnirements was Kent Island, in the
Chesapeake Bay, east of Annapolis,
Md" An honor no doubt TO Kent Is
land, but one whose practical applica-
ton the inhabitants of the island are
showing an inclination TO resist.
In population and associations Kent
Island makes a part of the Eastern
Shore of Maryland, and the Eastern
Shore of Maryland is unlike anything
in this country, unless it be the East
ern Shore of Virginia and some por-
lions of the tidewater section of the
latter State The people are old-time
Southern Americans. Modern nerves
| have not touched this blessed country.
Its old families live on it in their fine
old houses, many of them lovely ex-
amples of Colonial architecture, in the
ease they have enjoyed for genera
tions, surrounded by land and water
that give them copiously livelihood
and pleasure Those of their sons
who go away additionally enter the
navy. Many a distinguished officer OF
the American navy and of the Confed-
crate navy was born on the Eastern
Sho'.
These people love their native land
and water. The essence of patriot
ism is, after all, not theory but
! passion If each of us loved his own
half acre with that intense, pathetic
devotion with which the Frenchman
| loves his, capitalist and anarchist
alike would indulge in no debates
about patriotism and pacifism when
the invader threatens that half acre.
| The Frenchman, theorist and cerebral
though he is, has just that firmly root
| ed passion for the land. So might
every American if his land were al
ways as beautiful as the France the
Frenchman loves so fiercely. The
Eastern Sho' possesses such beauty;
it is calculated to inspire just that
passion. Let any European who has
been taught to regard America in
general as a melting pot, as a people
in the making, as something conglom-
/ crate, nondescript, mercurial, quite
for a distant future to consolidate,
spend even a fortnight on the Eastern
Sho" and there learn that America
does exist quite other than anything
he has suspected in a superficial OBJ
servation of our largest cities.
1t is not to be supposed for one mo-
ment that Kent Islanders would play
the Washington Government false or
hamper in any degree the effective
prosecution of the war-such is not
the temper of these dyed-in-the-wool
Americans. But it is reasonable to
suppose that before relinquishing
their homes of generations they will
satisfy themselves that some less
beautiful and less habitable spot can
not still be found in the vast stretch
of country east of the Mississippi for
an artillery proving ground. In that
quest the sympathy of all other dyed
in-the-wool Americans who have ever
loved with fierce devotion any bit of
our extensive soil will be on the side
OF the Kent Islanders.