Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1920-01-26
ODD PERlLS CAN CROWD
IN A NEWSLESS WORLD!
Weapons for Freedom in an Army
That Has Its Own SIackers

The ,cildCSt rUmorS hare been current
and the people did not knoic Hhdt to be-
icre and ichdt not to bclievc.-N c,cS
dispatch from Winnipeg.
DUBLIC men, teachers, writer's and all
the various army of amateur philos-
ophers who spend their days trying to
measure and define the value and function
of daily journalism should take day off
and brood upon the experiences of Win
nipeg. That city has an intelligent popu-
latlon. Recently, when the white paper
supply was exhausted, it was without
newspapers for week.
Business died. A sense Of something
like darkness descended on the COM
munity. Dsquiet and dread followed in
the wake Of gaIloping rumorS that no
one could stop. What the people missed
was not news alone. 1t was an essential
cohesive element that disappeared out of
the social scheme at Winnipeg-the COM
mon understanding and the common SYM
pathes that the hourly interplay of
thought in the newspapers makes pos
siblc
For critics of the daily press-and who
is so humble as not to leap into that role
occasionally ?-the newslcss week in
Winnipeg should be illuminating. But it
is for editors themselves that the incident
means most. What are they doing to
justify themselves in a time that must
count SO heavily upon their intelligence
and their integrity?
How many newspapers unite with
courage and discenment an honorable
sense of their obligation as interpreters
of events that must be clearly under
stood if we are to find way to safety
and happiness?
These are years of bedlam. Clumsy
hands are meddling dangerously with the
machinery of government. Hatred of
change is actually hindering progress.
| Dynamic forces that need only clear
! thinking to turn them. to magnificent
uses are being permitted to run Wild
| yet ignorance and ineptitudc in high
| places are making clear thinking diff
! cult or impossible.
| The easy and cowardly thing, and,
| indeed, the profitable thing, is often to
| tell not the truth but the lies in which
weak and hypocritical minds find tenn
! porary comfort.
Echo mans own opinion, no matter
| how foolish it is. says one school of
! friend, Be silent if you would have
! reputation for wisdom
| So, our own national landmarks are
being obscured in fog. The lights that
have guided mankind upward are. for
the time being, made invisible. The cap
| tains themselves are rocking the boat in
a shameless panic. But the silence of
prudence and expediency prevails widely
I lic,, yt-baro 40
| Of popular thought is not fouled by the
accumulated debris of futile, mean or
outworn minds.
To tell the hard and simple and whole
some truth in these days requires the
sort of courage that comes only with
absolute conservation to the causes of
! patriotism.
! Do not let them tell you that this nation
/ has to survive by lies. Do not let them
| tell you that it has to survive by cruelty,
! Injustice and the abandonment of it's
! ancient principles.
/ Hypocrisy with brass band accom-
! paniment never helped US and never will.
| The nation is bigger than any party or
| any group of men. Its honor is more
! sacred. Its meanings reach to the very
| skies. Until the. world goes altogether
| mad it will be safe. 1t must not be turned
| from the course that Americans have
| followed from the beginning in safety
and honor. All the pompous asses in
| and out of politics must not be permitted
to rot out the foundations of our institu-
/ tions or diminish our moral strength with
/ their cults Of selishness and pretense.
All of the work was not done in France.
/ and fO1,
herojsm still persists in America, and it
/ bears most heavily upon newspapers in
/ days when the very air is couded with
! lies manufactured for somebody's benefit.
Wires that run out from A new spaper
| office 60 to the ends of the carth to the
| heart Of tumult; to places where whole
/ empires are in upheaval; to places where
/ here is incredible heroism, incredible in
/ fanny, wild tearing down and a wild
| building up. All that is best and all that
! is worst in humanity meet every day in
/ terrible impacts.
We get only the confused backwash Of
| it all here, but the final decisions ill
| affect us as they viii affect tho rest of
humanity. And it is becau-' the man
| listening at this end of the cables and
/ the Washington wires knows that the
saints and the devils of the world are in
| fight for empire and for our own lives
that he must come, if he has any flicker
! Of patriotism in him, to regard printed
lie as a shouting infamy Anything less
| than truth will be intolerable to his heart
and TO his conscience.
Rumors, How well he knows the sort
Of rumors that ran wild n.Winnipeg! In
! their manufactured form he knows them
AS propaganda, He has to recognize
and stop them every day of his life in
the stupendous current of the days news.
It was a rumor that wrecked the
Italian army at Caporetto. 1t was rumor
that blinded the people Of the United
! States to the truth behind the greatest
industrial strike of history and left them
| atil1 lnamarc of q duty which thnN mnst