Worcester Democrat and the ledger-enterprise. (Pocomoke City, Md.) 1921-1953, 1940-08-09
AMERICAN WILL
NOT SUCCUMB
TO CONDITIONS

oppression ana censorship dOroau
are a challenge to which American
liberties could succumb, but from
which we believe they will emerge
fresh and strong. For just as it re-
quires a certain amount of adversely
to develop the best in the character of
an individual, so can human rights
be preserved and strengthened only
when they are subjected to a test that
requires that they be exercised to the
fullest It is human not fully to APP
preciate the sunshine until after the
rain, and it is also human to regard
too lightly the value of liberty until
the plight of those to whom it has
been denied has been witnessed
Now that war has emphasized the
darkness and oppression in which
most of the peoples of Europe have
been plunged, millions of Americans
have been made conscious, perhaps
for the first time, of the bountiful
benefits that our heritage of freedom
confers upon them. Hitherto they have
read the uncensored truth in their
newspapers without contemplating the
advantages of a free press; they have
worshiped when and where they chose,
only dimly conscious of the beauty of
religious freedom; they have stood on
the corners to bespeak their mind
without fear of concentration camp,
and yet without appreciation of free
dom of speech; they have met with
their fellows to discuss common prob
lens, unaware that but for the hertz
age of freedom of assembly they
might be imprisoned for so doing.
In his "Time Machine" H. G. Wells
forsees the man of the future as hav-
ing grown weak in body and spirit,
because, through the centuries that
are to follow, life will become so easy
as to fail to require the exercise that
develop physical and moral strength.
And when freedom has been accepted
as a matter of course, men become
less inclined to cherish it with their
full strength, only to grow apathetic
as it is snatched from weak hands,
hands which might have been
strengthened by holding fast "Etern-
al vigilance is the price of liberty"
therefore freedom can be preserved
only by men and women who have
been aroused to it's defense and
strengthened by their experience in
warding off attacks upon it
Thus if the sinister forces that have
moved down civil rights in most of
the civilized world are a threat to
liberty in this country, they also pre-
sent an opportunity to Americans to
withstand the assault from abroad
and hold even higher the torch of |
freedom. For the challenge is one that
evokes our highest concepts of con-
stitutional right and demands that
we safeguard them with the same
strength and determination with
which our forefathers won them. If
in the past we have been coddled by
the illusion that liberty is self-su-
staining, now we are aroused by the
knowledge that it must be defended
if we are not to follow the peoples of
Europe in seeing it snatched from
our grasp.
Having observed even the democ-
racies thrust their citizens into the
abyss of ignorance by censoring the
news and converting their newspapers
into propaganda machines; having
seen some countries venture to make
the church a pawn of the state; and
having witnessed the destruction of
those who dared speak their mind and
of the audiences who dared listen to
them, Americans are enjoying a COM
polling lesson in the glories of free
dom and the need for valor and sacri-
flee in it's defense Pessimists will
shudder lest the contagion of oppres-
sion that has plagued Europe spread
to these shores, but confident Ameri-
cans will accept the challenge and
create an immunity by more fully ap-
preciating the blessings of the liber-
ties which our Constitution confers
and girding themselves to defend
them, however formidable the assault.