El Imparcial. (San Juan, P.R.) 1918-197?, 1919-03-11

EDITORIAL VIEWS
I III III III The trouble with the majority Of
Z WRITER'S our self-styed inteAectuals is that
AND whatever elementary knowledge they
WRITINGS. acquired in school, never compile
III IS; *: mented afterwards by honest study,
careful reading and keen observation.
How essential it is any person to be well informed in
general and particularly we'll informed about his or her
trade or profession fully explained by Herbert Spen
. Ger in his little volume EdWcdton
How for instance, can physician keep up with the
continuous progress of his science if he is not constantly
reading professional books and periodicals. and finding
out what is going in hospital and laboratory? How
can any engineer be worth his if he does not keep
his eve on the every day achievements of the engineering
science? How, in fine can any professional man (and
for that matter any educated MANI call himself upto
date and efficient, if he is not familiar with the latest
discoveries and inventions?
But no profession requires better preparation and
reflection and study than the profession OF the
modern journalist The tendency quarters is to
regard this the business of amateurs but, reader
take word for it whoever wishes to do his work
scentiousy in this line of OccpatiOn will see that it is
no snecure for it requires deep hinkngand hard study
all the time In fact, difficult it to write the sub
stantial part of modern newspaper that big dailies
the world over, have in their saffs specialists of all
kinds, and in that way only is that they are entitled
to say that they lead public opinion. 80. y
A few seconds reflection about the matter Will make
plain for how difficult it should be to lead public
opinion in country like the Island of Porto Rico where
manded by civilized community, and the size and
of the community such that prevent that leader
ship from assuming it's proper character and develop
ment. The consequences that i'll poor country
very few editors understand the game and anybody write
in the papers about anything at ALL from Political Eco
nomy to Greek art and from the constitution of league
of nations to the mysteries of the Moon Did we hear
you asking how they can 90 It? Frankly speaking, we
do not know Nevertheless going TO give you some
examples, and you will make your deductions.
One of the first newspaper articles upon which
fixed eyes when Landed in Porto Rico (after quite
long absence) was long TRADE in which attention
called to the fact that in order to avoid the danger of the
submarines it might be found convenient to connect
Porto Rico with the United States by rail The writer
indu1ged in some fine speculation about the possibility
Of tunnelling under the Mona Passage and the Florida
Strait; for, asked he Had not the equally difficult task
of building tunnel under the English Channel been
seriously considered? Of course, neither
omsts engineers and not tell whether the thing
could be possble but opinion is that the poss-
bility that many we'll call the reaza
ton of the scheme impossibity; and furthermore
any high school child would have explained to the writer
that thing to tunnel under say twenty five miles,
at depth of perhaps two hundred feet, between
England and France, and another thing would be to
build tunnel say hundred miles long, from Cuba to
Key West, under whose depth is something like five
six thousand feet.
Another poet wrote some time ago a sonnet to his
sweetheart and explained in it to her that the further
apart they were, the in love he elt just the OPP
posite of what happens with the heat of the Sun. We
have that jewel kept somewhere and indeed it makes
nice little piece of sentimental terature but if Hora
tiOs Ars Poetcd had been read carefully by the poet
he before writing the sonnet would have looked
his Astronomy and would have noticed that when we
have winter in the northern hemisphere, the Sun is
actually about three million miles the Earth
than in Summer whose heat is due to the position in
which the Sun beams strike the Earth and at all to
the distance between the two.
Yes reader it is the easiest thing in the world to sit
down at a desk in a newspaper Office write down in
piece of paper ones opinion about anything at al-and
blunder!
The chief task Of the Red Gross
vanced Germany