The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1920-11-17

those who pretended to be our trlends
and who we knew were not. We are
thankful to those who were our
friends, and we have never held it
against those who were honestly
against US. We have only made a
cross-mark after those who sought to
deceive. The successful candidate in
! the race against US many times dur
ing his administration when the in
terests of the town were to be served
asked and received our assistance,
and some of those who opposed US
have in times CT dire need not failed
to ask our good Offices to pull them
through trouble and disappointments,
land what we have been able to do we
have done ungrudgingly.
We, therefore, think from our own
experiences that it is a good thing
fer a man to run for Office once
(mind you, we say once) in order that
he may ascertain, (whether they be
against you or for you) who are the
real men in community, who work
for the community unselishly, and
who are not two-faced, pretending to
be friends to all parties but only
spiteful towards all parties. There is
another thing which thoughtful
man learns by running for office, and
that is that office is not the place for
the man who desires to be of service.
In order to be of real service a: man
must be free from political entan-
clements, under political obligations
to no man, and under no other obli-
cations except those which come from
honorable association with all men.
If man can run for Office and learn
these things, as we hope we have
learned them, and we hope the Editor
of the Medium has now learned them,
we can settle down to the business to
which we have been called in some
way or other, and can then speak,
and will speak our honest convictions.
We will at least be in position to be
of service to the people among whom
we live, and to whom after all we all
owe the greater part of what we are.
1t is true that there are people in
every community who undertake to
"despitefully use" the man who tries
tc be- of service. He is accused wrong
= fully and, he is oftentimes misunder-
stood, but so long as man has the
commentator of his own conscience
and speaks the truth as it is given
him to see it, he should be satisfied.
And that is another lesson we
learned in our brief experience in
politics, and that is the reason we
say that newspaper man should net
seek office, because humanity is weak
and politics and office-seeking make
trimmers" of men, dam up the chan
nels through which the truth should
flow, and sometimes make towards
of the best Of men.
We thapk the Medium for bringing
this matter to our attention and for
giving US this opportunity to say this
much of the men who in the twenty
five years we have lived in Abbeville
have always been our friends, whose
friendship we have always tried to
merit, and whose friendship it is
worth while to have.
We grant the Medium that there
are some people in this community
who despise US, and as Col. Roosevelt
said, "the longer we live the Wore
cause we shall give them to dislike
u.s." because we are not here to be
the partisan of any bad man nor Of
any bad cause, if we know it.
In the meantime we may say that
we believe that we have the support
of the thinking people of this COM
munity and of this county, whether
they agree with us in all things or
not, and our reason for saying so is
that our subscription list continues
to grow.
We thank you, again.