The globe-independent. (Hagerstown, Md.) 1943-19??, 1951-04-05

The following is the text OF tne
address of Everett S. Lee, editor of
General Electric Review" on the
subject, americas Place in The
New World" given at the annual
banquet of the Hagerstown Chamber
of Commerce, March q, which was
briefly reviewed in last weeks is
sue.
When my good friend, President
Paul Smith, suggested this subject, l
questioned that | could do it justice;
but then l thought, surely in this
great land of ours, each and every
one of us should have an ideal of its
rightful place, and should be able to
visualize it and to describe it; and so
l applied myself to the task.
First, l must have a text; and l
found it as I was walking along 10th
Street in New York City, passing
the Library of Columbia University
on my way to address a meeting of
the Association of Mathematics
Teachers of New York City. For ov-
er the doorway of the Library l saw
these words, which, even though it
was cold and the wind was blowing
hard, l stopped to write down in my
little book for they were SO COM
y,Iofa11z oIyrrocoiIya.
Kings College
Founded In The Province of New
York BY Royal Charter In The Reign
of George II
Perpetuated as Columbia College by
The People of The State of New York
when they became Free and
Independent
Maintained and Cherished From
Generation to Generation
for
The Advancement of the Public Good
and
The Glory OF Almighty God
And / thought how perfectly that
described our country. Chartered
by Kings we became free and indie
pendent, each of us to live on to-
gether in generation after generation
with cherished memories from the
past and cherished hopes for the fu-
ture, undergirded by knowledge and
wisdom and understanding for serv-
ice to the public good, and to the
glory of Almighty God
And I thought of the history of
our country, of the past as it was
unfolded to me by my teachers in
the public schools, and l took out
my American History Book, and l
reread it, "The History of The United
States" by George Fiske. And I
was thrilled again and again as l
reread the story of what men had
done to bring our great country to
where it is today.
And that story goes back to the
beginning of time and to the story
of man as we know it,
''In the beginning, God created
the heaven and the earth" and
I'm the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and
the Word was God"
but 1 picked up the story of man in
Europe in the early 1400s, when the
ships of Europe carried European
metals, wood and pitch to Alexan-
dria and other Eastern seaports, and
returned to the Italian coasts with
silks and cottons and pearls and
spices from Asia and the East. Those
were enterprising times, but some
one is always taking the joy out of
life, and this time it was the Turks
who closed the avenues of trade with
their practices and their control. And
so man must find a new route to the
East = and though 1900 years before,
Aristotle had proved that the earth
is round ball, it took the vision
and the courage of Christopher Co.
lumbus together with the help of
King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella
of Spain, for him, on that August day
in 1892, to bid goodbye to land and
steer into the trackless ocean, firm
in his belief in a scientific theory.
These are the essential factors in
the formula of mans achievement;
vision, courage, understanding be-
lief, faith, together with help and
hard work and perseverance against
obstacles and difficulties to eventual
ly overcome. And it made Columbus
one of the sublime figures in history,
for he opened the avenue to new
land, our land, though he did not
know he had done so; and as he did
not find riches in abundance to pay
for his undertaking, he was discred-
tied, and he died poor and broken