Detroit evening times. (Detroit, Mich) 1921-1958, 1942-04-29
Patriot Calls
D.oingW+hou+
A Pleasure
Great Thought for Now
Said by Mason
BY BENJAMIN DE CASSEREs

A GREAT thought for these
"A times:
"Our all is at stake, and the
little cOnveniences and COM
forts of life, when sought out
In competition with our liberty,
ought to be rejected not with
reluctance but with pleasure"
That was said by George Ma
son of Virginia, who was the
author of the Virginia Bill of
Rights, which afterward became
the model for the Bill of Rights
under which we live today, and
for which we have drawn the
sword, never to be laid down
until we have made America
safe for free human beings.
Today, as in the heroic days
of our Revolution, all of us must
be prepared to make these sac
Tifices OF which Mason speaks.
To preserve our liberties, we
sacrificed some of them in the
Revolution. in the Civil. War
and -in-the First World War.
What we did then, we shall do
now.
Our "all is at stake" again,
and TO preserve tn t all we
should be re dy to sacrifice
with pleasure" many of our
conveniences and comforts, and,
temporarily, even some of those
very liberties for which we now
stand embattled
There is no other road TO VIC
tory.
WHEN a professor in one OF
w our colleges writes a book
on democracy or the war, he,
ii seems to me, tries to see
how many words he can weave
around a very simple-and COM
monplace-idea.
Let us look at 1.-THE Destiny OF
Western Man" (Reynal e. Hitch
cock), for instance, by Prof. w.
T. STAGE of Princeton University.
Here are 81 pages of rather
heavy-going English to prove
that reason and sympathy are
better than force and hate and
that democracy, as western
Man" knows it,, is opposed to
what Professor STAGE calls
vaguely "the will"
The fact that he finds the
"primacy" of the reason in Plato
does not prove that man has
ever-in the West or East-lived
according to reason. He lives
according to expediency-the
thing that works.
Democracy, then, is. the best
way of life because we Ameri-
cans, English and pre,war
French like it better than any
other way of living. Most other
nations prefer tyrantS, regimen
tation and slavery.
AS to pitting the reason
against the will, who ever heard
of anything that was not in the
realm of the will? Our "rea-
sons" are merely our excuses for
doing what we instinctively want
to do. If democracy is not will
to-power, what is it, then? Will
to weakness No, says Professor
STAGE, it is will-to-goodness.
Well, if goodness" (the good
life" as he calls it'd is not a form
of will and force. what is it?
The great blemish of THE Des-
tiny of Western Man" is that
Professor STAGE is really a theo-
logan camouflaged as a "philos-
opher."
NOV, this whole endless argu-
~ ment between freedom and
slavery (for that's all this war
comes to) is presented much
more clearly in 81 pages by a
boy who lived nearly 400 years
ago and who wrote an immortal
essay, "Anti-Dictator" (Colum-
bia University Press), when he
wasn't quite Is years old. His
name was Etienne de la Boetie,
Frenchman, who died when he
was only 33, but who was cele-
brated by his friend, Michel de
Montaigne, in beautiful tribute
in his Essays"
Boetie calls his essay "a Dis
course on Voluntary Servitude."
1t is an argument, passionately
urged, for liberty. Now, liberty
does not emanate from the rea-
son. 1t is not brain-born. 1t is
a biological necessity, an emo
tional demand of the ego, a
fundamental instinct of mayfly,
chick and man.
QOETIE, in rapid. vivid
- sketches gives us the history
of famous tyrants. tells how the
latter hornswoggle the crowd
and he analyses that most de-
grading of human hankerings-
the preference of security" for
liberty (Which has been loom
ing in the United States of late
years..
"The very beasts" says Boetie,
"if men are not too deaf, cry
out to them, Long live liberty"
I'VE feed the horse from birth
I'm order to train him to do our
bidding. Yet, ne Is tanned with
such difficulty that when we be-
gin TO break him I'm, ne bites the
bit, he rears at the touch of the