The Hays free press. [volume] (Hays, Kan.) 1908-1924, 1922-10-19

has been in Europe telling the states
men and the public over there that
America has broken faith" in fail
ing to feed, finance and fight for the
rest of the world perpetually. II. G..
Wells remarks that Americans of the
sort he met in this country, toadies of
an all too prevalent breed, are suffer
ing from a national inferiority COM
pick. Americans used to be criticized
for Boosting. If they were ever more
/ guilty than other people of that Of
tense, which is doubtful, certainly in
this day they are far more guilty of
failure to appreciate and stand by
their own country, which many of
them, partly because of persistent
alien propaganda, fail to appreciate
/ or comprehend.
Mr.. Kipling's idea that America
has lost her soul is one that European
literati have been exopunding for a
long time; in fact most of them have
never been willing to admit that
America ever had a soul. The Amer
lean people have become accustomed
to abuse from European, especially
British, authors, whose royalties are
/ largely derived from the sale of their
! books to American readers. Tom
Moore set the pace more than a cen
fury ago, Dickens repaid the hospi-
tally of Americans with caricatures
/ of their country, and the fashion
these writer's set has been followed
down to the day of Kipling and Shaw.
Americans have not been much dis
turbed by these i'll natured misrepre-
sensations, knowing they were the re-
suit of ignorance and prejudice.
There are Americans who have
thought that this country's place in
history depends upon the judgment
of Europe, but most Americans care
little for what Europe thinks that is
based upon envy or i'll will.
MI. Kipling's theory that America
has degenerated since the Civil war is
surely not based upon an acceptance
of what Charles Dickens said about
Americans before the Civil war. If
the killing off of men by war causes a
country to degenerate, what must be
the condition of England and of Eu-
rope after a century of almost con-
tinuous wars? Mr.. Kipling has never
been an advocate of the theory that
nations grow strong through pacifsm.
The Civil war was a noble struggle
for the preservation of national unity.
and thus for avoidance of the evils
that attend, in Europe, the division of
a continent into many petty, warning
i states. incidentally it was a war for
the curling of the power of the insti-
tuition of human slavery. Where was
Mr.. Kipling's country when that war
was on? Did it take up the cause of
humanity and liberty and maintained
sovereignty of the great English
speaking nation of the new world? It
IS matter Of record that the middle
and upper classes of England were
almost unanimously on the side of
secession with slavery, because divi-
! sion of the American union would
have helped the British empire. They
bought the bonds, made the munitions
and even fitted out the privateers of
the states in rebellion, two or three
times sought to intervene against the
United States and went back on the
ancient British principle of the right
of search and seizure on the high seas
IN order to force Lincoln and Seward
to their knees in the Trent episode
while modelling an army in Canada.
How late was Mr.. Kipling's England
IN that war, which was surely as much
the concern of the English mother
land as Britain's troubles with Ger
many were of ours in 1914?
Undoubtedly millions of Americans
have been hurt by the realization that
after all this country has done for
Europe, our sole return is i'll will.
The belief that we could expect any,
thing else was base dupon a miscon-
ception of Europe and of the tradi-
tional attitude of European nations.
This misconception was the result of
needing the chatter of European
propagandists, imported and domestic
rather than to the admonitions of
Washington, who told the American
people in his Farewell message that
there was no such thing as disinter-
ested friendship mong nations and
that Europe was controlled by inter
ests and influences with which we
were not concerned and with which
we could not become involved without
embarrassment and injury.
/ Some nnn hnr 4. L. ~ = -