Scandinavian American. [volume] (Seattle, Wash.) 1945-1958, 1949-05-01

Inc MARSHALL P1an-for recon-
struction.
The Atlantic Pact-for security.
Some of us from the other side
feel inclined, I believe, to address
to America Longfellow's poem,
which President Roosevelt in a
crucial moment of the war quoted
to Winston Churchilps England:
"Sail on oh Union strong and
great.
Humanity with all its fears
With all the hopes of future
years
Is hanging breathless on thy
fate!
AS it should be, we are hearing
these days great deal about peace
and some people think that they
are more peace-loving than others.
The fact is, of course, that we all
love peace, and that from the bot
tom of our hearts we abhor war.
With all our faith and strength we
must strive and pray to prevent
such an indescribable calamity. I
wonder whether the crux of the
matter does not lie in the question:
What price peace? 1t is not
enough to say: Peace, it is won
derful". Peace making is serious
and complicated matter in our
present world. Because we must
insist not on peace only, but on
peace with justice and freedom.
We can all have peace, individ-
uals and nations, if we give in on
every point until we are stripped
of everything-eXcept peace. The
peace of the grave. Norway could
have had peace, of a kind, in 1910,
if we had submitted to Hitlers out
rageous demands! But the Norwe-
gian people preferred to die on
their feet rather than live on their
knees.
The unforgivable sin against hui
mainly is committed by those who
pervert for their own purposes the
worlds deep longing for peace.
Those who cry peace, but have
no peace in their hearts, and APP
plaud aggression when it suits
their own ideas and aims.
We have come to a stage, / be-
lieve, when we should be wary to
use the word peace by itself To
make ourselves clear, we should
speak of peace with freedom, peace
with justice 49,.
In San Francisco, in 1945, it was
suggested that in order to qualify
as a member of the United Ma
tons, a state should be not only
"peace-loving" = as the Charter
now says-hut peace and freedom
loving. This was not adopted.
In Norway and the other coun-
tries occupied during the war by
the totalitarian aggressor the peo-
pie know the horror, the deadly OPP
pressive silence, when brutal force
usurps the seat of the Goddess of
Liberty. They know the constant
fears, the insecurity and brutality
of the police state.
They know that freedom, very
simply, means freedom of the spo-
ken and written word, freedom OF
assembly, freedom of worship, re-
spect for the dignity of man. They
know that freedom implies a re-
sime of law and equal justice for
all. They know that if a scientist
is not free to search for truth-f
a writer or a composer is not free
to search for beauty. wherever he
NAV find it-then we are inter-
fering with the free flow of ere
alive genius.
Such is freedom. No one can
convince us, by tortured dialects,
that freedom means anything else.
ANY retreat from these hard-won
bastions of freedom, justice and de-
mocracy is not radicalism, not lio-
eralism,-bu reaction.
We also know that we do not
want Government for the people
if it is not at the same time
government of and by the people
The Encyclopaedia Britannica
says: Democracy, that form OF
government in which the people
rules itself, either directly or
through representatives"