Rockingham post-dispatch. [volume] (Rockingham, N.C.) 1917-1965, 1920-10-21


because of physical defects. In many
cases they were Of such nature that
they had not even been suspected by
the victim. Some Of them were rem
edied. Science has found many ways
Of making mankind over and health
as an asset is understood as never be-
fore. Vocational training on an i'm
mense scale is being carried on clear
across the continent. Begun in bene-
ficient recognition of the Russian
proverb which says God never closes
a door without opening a window, it
has made the blind to see with his
fingers, the deaf to see the words he
can no longer hear upon ths lips of
his comrades, and the lame to walk.
Its primary purpose is for those who
have been injured in the war, but no
man can measure its ultimate effect
upon the nation. Here we may find
the superman, through offering him a
chance to develop brain and soul and
make his vision real.
Teachers and preachers and doctors
have been telling us for years that
man does not live by bread atone, and
that all work and no play ends in ner-
vous prostration, but the basic idea
back of all this began to come home
when millions Of men in hundreds of
camps asked for books and papers and
amusements and were given all they
asked and more. At a time when we
were preparing to fling away life on a
|prodigious scale, if need be, that all
that makes life worth living might not
perish from the earth, the government
was not unmindful Of the needs Of the
individual. Undoubtedly there was
extravaganza; wars are not an eco
nomical method of disposing of ma
tional wealth, but we were not extrav-
agant with human life. Ships and yet
more ships, haste and still more haste
that we might stop the frightful waste
of civilization, of life, of the very
spirit of life itself, and the result was
the total collapse of the German de-
Tense, the crumbling away of that gil
gantic army and the armistce eight
months before even the most sanguine
thought it possible.
| have no disposition to make the
winning of the war a partisan affair,
or to claim the League of Nations as
a triumph of Democratic diplomacy,
but l do confidently assert that the hu-
n1anitarian idea which has perineated
the whole conduct of this government
in it's prosecution of the war and it's
deliberations at the peace table after
wards are the outcome of the same
ideal of governmental responsibility
which has written upon our statute
books the legislation to which l have
already referred.
The Republican party claims for it.
self the passage of the Federal Wo-
man Suffrage amendment, and appeals
to the women of the country to sup
port it in return for it's eleventh hour
conversion to measure which has
been pending in Congress for forty
years, and was already an old story
there when the Federal amendment
was first introduced. The plain, I'M
lpalatable fact is, and suspect that
the women of the United States know
| it very we'll that they owe little to
any party. They do owe much to in
dividuals in all parties who nave been
their champions. They do owe an
eternal debt Of gratitude to Woodrow
Wilson who made their cause his own
and in spite of bitter opposition from
some members of his own party, fac
ing almost certain defeat from the re-
calcitrants of both parties, entered the
lists in their behalf with an appeal
that was hailed by the women of the
nation as their proclamation of elnan-
cipation. It was the President of the
United States who said:
sour safety as we'll as our compre-
hension of matters that touch society
to the quick, will depend upon the di-
rect and authoritative participation Of
women in our counsels. We shall need
their moral sense to preserve what is
right and fine and worthy in our sys-
tern of life as well as to discover just
what it is that ought to be purified
and reformed. Without their counsel
ings we shall be only half WISE"
| can not do better than use his
words in closing, "This is my case.
This is my appeal"