The Glasgow courier. [volume] (Glasgow, Mont.) 1913-current, 1919-02-21
COURAGE AND COMMON SENSE.

The bill recently introduced in con
gress providing for the deportation o:
informed alien enemies is a good be
ginning. 1t is a bill with incisors
but it lacks molars. A dainty little
peck at this a~lien-enemy business il
not enough. Deportation of a small
and relatively insignificant group O.
Germans who were caught with tn
goods is not enough. Like much Amer
lean legislation this bill does not g
to the root of the trouble. A GROUP
Of ever more dangerous alien enc
mics, made in Germany and finished
in Russia, is operating in America to-
day. They are conspiring against ou1
institutions and hoping to loot ou1
country. We are not so short of ton.
mage that we cannot spare some fol
them. One shipload of Bolshevik ag.
itators started home for Russia vie
Siberia and a second shipload started
home for Germany would end the
whole business.
Has congress the courage and the
common sense to act? In the past it
has usually been more given to catch
ing a snake alive and counting it's rat
ties and trying to tame it, than to
stamping on its head. This is not,
however, a domestic snake, but Of
the well-known German viper family.
We should have learned by this time
not to play with that breed.
Courage and common sense would
have prevented almost every evil with
which we are contending today. A
little simple root legislation passed
when the problems were young would
have done what a multitude Of repres-
sive laws have since been powerless
to effect. These measures were so
obvious that they were not statesman
ship-only common sense.
The need for drastic legislation to
restrict immigration has been appar-
ent for some time. Congress finally
passed a law that requires the would
be immigrant to tell how far he has
progressed in the Second Reader Or
something equally searching. If it
had decided to be real nasty it would
doubtless have prescribed an examina-
ton in the new dance steps.
The real trouble with Americans is
that there are not enough of them and
that the rank and file do not make
themselves decisively heard in mat
tiers of legislation. They believe in
their country and their institutions
with all their hearts, and are inclin-
ed to let it go at that. Of late years,
too, they have been in danger of be-
ing overwhelmed by a mass of undi-
gested aliens. True, a large number
of these foreigners are good material
for citizenship, but they have poured
in too fast for proper assimilation.
And while they are in a transition
state from the customs, methods and
institutions of the Old World to those
Of the New, speaking English imper-
-fectly or not at all, they r easily
misled and preyed Of by dishonest
demagogues and agitators. One of
the great tasks ahead of u genera
ton is the teaching of our ideals and
our language to these men. If we let
in a new flood of foreigners before
we do this the melting pot will end up
as a garbage pail.
Among Americans there is no real
Bolshevik sentiment. The stuff is all
made in Germany and exported to us
via Russia. The newspapers play up
every happening that car possibly be
given a Bolshevik head, exactly as
they would a mysterious murder Or
a hot-story divorce, and for the same
reason. 1t is abnormal, un-American
and sensational. But it is the news
fad of the hour, like a Thaw trial,
to which the papers send sob-sisters,
specialists in emotion and "big
names" For a certain part of the
public are morbidly interested in Boil
shevism, as they are in the latest muir
derer and his crime, Many pyscho-
nathic momon affect Il mild form of
it as they would any strange cult that
promised diversion and excitement.
The only real field for Bolshevism
in America is among the ignorant
and half-assimilated foreign-born; our
only danger from it is in permitting
its alien-enemy leadership to operate
among the credulous and the vicious.
The cure is courage and common sense.
Thi,e same simple home prescription
will take us through the reconstruc-
ton period to a better and stronger
America.
No one but a fool will shut his eyes
to the faults of our democracy or de.
ny that many grave abuses exist in
our country. The American conten-
ton is simply that no other system yet
devised by man has given SO much
peace, prosperity and happiness to a
nation as ours, and that none holds
mt so much promise for the future,