The McDowell times. [volume] (Keystone, W. Va.) 1904-1941, 1940-08-16

why we are as nearly invincible at
home as any country can be. That's
why 1t seems, to many women at
least, a foolish thing to carry naval
threats too far away from home.
Taking care of ourselves, maintain
ing q dignifled attitude to national
troubles overseas that are neither
understood by us nor Of our max
ing, would seem the wiser policy. It
would seem the characteristic Amer
lean policy. For while we are will
ing to help in every other possible
way, and have so helped and while
we are willing to give political rec
ognition to totalitarian governments
everywhere, and have so given it, it
is too much to expect a normally
peaceful and friendly nation that she
be scared into sharing in wars she
did nothing to create.
Life Will Go On.
This war will end. Humiliations
will be swallowed; prices will be
paid hearts broken; children
starved or destroyed by malnutri-
ton; the dead will be buried; and
a great many loud voices will be
silenced by death. And when well
all emerge, adjusted to the new con-
ditions, recognizing little less pow
er and pride in this nation, little
more power and pride in that, a tag
Of territory clipped off here and at
tached there.
And for the great mass of Euro
pean women the days problem will
be what it always was: a Job for
the man, a welcome for the new
baby, a little less butter perhaps
and fewer exchanges of old cars
for new; pleasures that can't be
kept away where there is health and
work and love; reconciliation to new
ideas-ideas which will be fading
and blending and changing into the
old ideas before they are fairly &C
cepted.
1t Has Happened Before.
For the face of Europe has been
war-riddled and the boundaries of
Europe changed necessarily for one
thousand years. Spain ruled The
Netherlands by inherited right: Po-
land has been anybody's and every
body's; Calais was Queen Mary's:
Alsace and Lorraine have to look in
the glass every morning to see
whether they're French or German;
autocracy starved and shot down
the people of Russia within the
memory Of man; nothing that can
happen there today can surprise
them after what they knew in 1905.
and all the long centuries before 1905.
Spain has had a dozen Instructions
In hundred years; her kings dis
appear, reappear, fly again. Napo-
leon thought he owned Holland and
Italy, and sailed CALAMITY into Rus
sia across what wasn't yet Belgium,
IN 1900. In q generation or two ali
the countries lapsed back to their
original positions, II indeed Euro
pean countries may be said to have
such things.
So "sursum corda." Which il one
way OF saying: Lift up your
hearts" Our own history is a GAL
liant one-unafraid, friendly, content
ed within its own borders. Our
northern neighbors are united to US
by more than one hundred years of
friendship. Our two great oceans
give US protection that any Euro
pean nation well may envy. We
are not thieves; we buy what we
want and keep the friendship of the
purchaser. The world laughed at us
when we bought Alaska, at the Gads-
den Purchase, the Louisiana Pur-
chase, when we made compensation
Tor the Philippines. But that was
wise dealing. France, Spain, Rus
sla aren't trying TO steal anything
back from US, as a result. Let the
other nations learn that lesson and
Wen have better world.
Don't be afraid.