Detroit evening times. (Detroit, Mich) 1921-1958, 1944-12-01
BY JUDGE FRANK A. PICARD


"A our country makes contribution and renders
service to the United States of America, for no
country can stand the piess light of publicity and
research from the time of its beginning to the
present better than the land in which we live, the
land we call home, either because we were born
here or because we came here from foreign soil.
say "from the time of its beginning" because
there is something most significant in the dis
covery of America. First, there is the name of the
man who landed at San Salvador. His first name
was Christopher, and that name means Christ
bearer"
In addition, it is worth more than passing
notice for us to remember that when Columbus
landed he did not plant sword in these barren
sands as his first act; he did not even erect the
emblem of his country as that first act.
THE first thing Columbus did was to raise the
L cross, and he planted it firmly as the beginning
of the crusade of Christianity in the New World.
Today, you and l are living in that land; living
in the country that grew around that cross. And
the land that was so discovered and so dedicated,
today at this momentous time in the history of the
world is making the greatest contribution of all
toward the salvation Of mankind and Christianity.
Link these two events together-America in
1892 and America in 1944-and between those two
world epochs you have the history of America
without which one can have neither the proper
perspective, the proper respect, nor the proper
love of country; and with which no man can doubt
that the United States of America has been singu-
larly blessed by God continuously from its dis
covery.
TALKING with the young people of today have
ham ,l,of Id of t,p1oc Nv ha
parent lack of their knowledge of the history Of
the United States. Yet to me history is as funda-
mental as reading writing, or arithmetic.
No man would want to buy piece of property
without examining an abstract of title, and yet
such abstract means merely the history of what
has happened to that piece Of property since it
came under the ownership of man. He wouldn't
want to buy it; he wouldn't want to fight for it
without knowing all about it; and yet many people
in America have failed to acquaint themselves
with the abstract of events in the life of this coun
try-those stirring moments that brought it to
where it is today.
WHO were those pilgrim fathers? Who was this
w man Washington who knet at Valley Forge
and prayed? Who were those Tories and those
Wings? Who were those patriots? Who were
those Daniel Boones? What about those covered
wagons? What difference does it make if the
Indians killed few hardy Pilgrim pioneers or
that we took land away from the Indians?
Who was Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson,
James Monroe, Abraham Lincoln, Grover Ceve-
land, Theodore Roosevelt Woodrow Wilson? How
do we guarantee religious liberty? Who freed the
slaves?
What about property rights and human
rights? How did these things get to be as free to
us as air and water? Whose blood was spilled
down through the years that might be prvi-
legged in 1914 say priveged-to defend freedom
for ourselves and to aid in helping to regain
freedom for the peoples of all the world?
LEARN YOUR HISTORY.
That's paramount to me-and that's why the
William Randolph Hearst National American His
tory Awards is great step, even if it only stirs
up the question.
Know America because it will make you
stronger American when you know your country;
particularly when you realize how unselfsh she
has been to offer her life to save the world and
how that unselfshness has paid dividends in the