The Durant news. (Durant, Miss.) 1882-1985, 1950-12-14
THROUGH
HAZEL
EYES
y Hazel Brannon Smith


It was our privilege to be the
guest of the West Lions Club at its
charter night banquet held last
Thursday evening at the Yves,
Gym and hear Ben Hilbun, assis-
tant to the President of State Col
lege. make a splendid address.
Mr.. Hilbun, always at his best
g an inspirational speaker
brought an especially appropriate
message to the West Lions, their
ladies and a large number OF
guests - about lis persons in all
The measure Of greatness is our
ability to stand for something, y
he stated. Certainly this is test
that America today faces and will
continue to face every day from
here on out since we have assum-
ed the leadership Of the world.
As citizens we must each do our
best to see that our country takes
its stand for something which we
deem worthwhile. As citizens in
the only really free country in the
world we must try to see that the
system which made this country
great and its people the most pros
porous and best-informed in the
world is allowed to continue to
exist.
America is additionally the
land Of opportunity and 1t must be
allowed to remain so.
Mr.. Hilbun sounded warning
note when he said: Il hope we
don't get the erroneous impress
sion that we can't lose because we
have always heretofore won."
In the latter statement he was
referring to our fighting the war
IN Korea and TO our struggle with
communism now and in the days
to come.
He emphasized that the great
ness Of America lay in it's oppor-
tunities for people Of all classes
and races and creeds.
Mr.. Hilbun, a member of the
Starkville Rotary Club, was ac-
companied by his charming wife,
the former Josy Rosamond, Of
West.
We congratulate the West Lions
on their splendid organization and
on being afflicted with Lions
International, one of the leading
and most progressive civic organ
izations in America.
We appreciate very much the
many compliments we have re-
ceived from Q lot Of friends and
readers on the special l8-page
forestry edition we published last
week. Many Of you were nice
enough to say you thought il the
best edition of the paper ever
published.
At this time we want to thank
all those who made this edition
possible - and especially do we
thank all of our advertisers who
made it possible for us to present
to you SO much news and infor--
nation about forestry in Holmes
county.
We have been told that lot
Of the schools are keeping their
copies in the school libraries for
future references and many Of
our teachers have told me they
were using it for reference them
selves.
We'd like to emphasize, how
ever, that forestry is not some
thing new we've just begun to
support - far from it. As mat
ter of fact for several years in
this newspaper we have been car
rying in almost every issue some
thing on forestry. We do this as a
public service in order to enlist
interest in and support of forestry
activities. We do this because we
are firmly convinced that forestry
should bring much greater bene-
fit to the people of our county
than it now does - and we know
this will not come about over
night. 1t will take years of long
and patient work to accomplish
this.
But we want to be in there every
week informing our readers what
they can be doing with lot of
worn out, eroded land. We fig
ure that if enough information is
gotten to the people and often
enough it will eventually make an
impression and maybe some posi-
tive action.
We know this will take long
time but we expect to be around
here the rest of our life.
O.A. CO.