Goodwin's weekly : a thinking paper for thinking people. [volume], August 07, 1915, Image 1

About Goodwin's weekly : a thinking paper for thinking people. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1902-1919

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'Vol.26 SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH, AUGUST7, 1915 . No 8 U
An Independent Paper Published Under
I :; the Management of J. T. Goodwin ::
I EDITORIALS B Y JUDGE C. C. GOOD WIN
i
National Friendship
NATIONAL friendships are not unlike neighbor
hood friendships.
Two neighboring families may be most inti
mate, but if one member of one family quarrels
' with a member of the other family, in nine cases
! "' out of ten the families are estruuged.
Before our great Civil war the men and
women of the northern states met the women and
men of the southern states on most cordial terms,
often intermarried; the feeling was of mutual re
spect and friendship which often culminates in
family alliance. There were, of course, some
abolitionists in the north, some fire-eaters in the
south fomenting trouble, but they did not count
though some of them were the brightest repre
sentatives of the race until a little band in the
south led by Davis, Toombs, Hammond and a
few others called a convention and induced three
or four state conventions to pass ordinances of
secession, on the ground that the election of a
Republican president was an intolerable menace
to slavery which was an institution which under
the constitution the whole nation was bound to
respect. This did not much arouse the northern
states, the people would not believe that a real
war was intended. Even the firing upon the
"Star of the West" steamship was construed as
the mob work of a few southern firebrands.
But when the news of the firing upon and cap
ture of Fort Sumter was flashed over the coun
try it smote northern men like a blow in the facb
and then nothing would do but a war that had to
be waged until slavery ceased to exist.
From the first there has never been any clash
ings between our government and the German
government and her people by millions have come
ito our country to find homes. In the same way
except in one little diplomatic wrangle, our re
lations with France have been most cordial and
many evidences of mutual respect and friendship
between the two governments and people are on
record.
Our government has had some sharp wrang
ling with the British government but no hostile
gun has been fired on either side for a century,
while the business and social relations between
the two peoples have been most cordial, nine
tenths of the immigrants from the United King
dom to Canada, up to seven years ago, had, within
a year after landing in Canada, drifted acrosB the
line into our country.
When the war with Spain was sprung, the lists
of the names of the officers and men who went
out to the Avar on sea and land, showed that the
Germans, the French, the English, the Scotch and
Irish of the United States were all Americans.
Now the most terrible of modern wars is rag-
!ing beyond the sea, and the blood which is thicker
than water is throbbing in the breasts of all these
people on our soil. It is not only natural but in
evitable that it should be so. While our govern
ment must insist that international laws must not
be violated, and while all native Americans back
their government in that insistance, still it is
their duty to keep in mind that the foreign-born
neighbor who was a close friend a year ago, has
not changed, and is entitled to just as kindly
thoughts as ever. His sympathy for native land
has not changed him; his boys will be American
soldiers if needs be, his girls will bo the mothers
of American soldiers. There is the utmost need,
on the part of Americans who love their country
to be most careful and to nurse no ungenerous
prejudices in these days when the fate of nations
is hanging in the balances beyond the sea, for
there are men in our country who would gladly
involve our country at any time in war, if they
could see a commercial gain by so doing. This is
a time when hearts should be kept open and
heads should be kept level. It is no time to rock
the boat; it is a time when only high thoughts
should be cherished, to help direct the public
opinion of the country into fair channels that
when the fighting ceases through exhaustion our
country may be a potent factor in framing a plat
form of peace.
As To Native Land
SECRETARY LANE of the Interior, was intes
viewed recently and said, not unkindly, that
pensions prevented some sweeping improvements.
He should have said "delayed," not "prevented."
The pensions are the fulfillment of the unwritten
contract which the government entered into when
the volunteers went to the war. But though un
written it was as sacred as any covenant could
be.
Doubtless a good many unworthy men are
drawing pensions, doubtless a good many schem
ing women are doing the same, but nevertheless
the mighty pension roll represents but a trifle of
what the nation owes to her soldiers, living and
dead.
In the same interview the secretary said:
"Here we have a territory larger by far than
any which a democratic government hitherto has
attempted to handle. I think it reasonably may
be considered doubtful if the United States today
would have been in existence had it not been for
the railroads and the telegraph. Thought and
quick communication held the people together."
The secretary should have more faith. If
thought and quick communication saved the re
public in the great war, the same agents precipi
tated the war half a century sooner than the re
bellion would have ripened without them. Then
there was more to it. In his great funeral eulogy
over Lincoln, Bancroft said: "That God rules in
the affairs of men is as certain as any truth ot
physical science. On the great moving power,
which is from the beginning, hangs the world of
the senses and the world of thought and action."
Now Bancroft was an old-time Democrat, was
once, we believe, secretary of war under a Demo
cratic president. But in those days some Demo
crats believed in God.
In that paragraph the great historian, look- '
ing back upon what had happened, recognized IH
that the mighty war had to be that the wrong fjfl
of human slavery had not only to bo wiped out, IjH
but atoned for, and that the sacrifices were dl- JjH
rected that the freedom of our land, which the IH
fathers proclaimed, might bo made sure. It was IH
for that the stage for the mighty tragedy had to IH
be set and the tremendous acts called. IH
If the kings of Europe would just now read 1H
those words of Bancroft, they might tremble for jH
their thrones, for wrongs have to, sooner or later, H
be atoned for. H
And now every day the words of Gilpin, spoken H
long before the war, begin to look more and more H
like prophecies. H
He pointed out that the eastern continent was H
an apex, that the rivers ran down from that apex H
in all directions and that the peoples on the banks H
of those rivers had been warring for untold cen- H
turies, while our country was but as a cup, the IH
streams all converging, that the people would fol- jH
low the streams and, like the rivers, merge and H
commingle, and that the mingled thoughts of this H
great central people would make the public opin- H
ion of and sway the nation. H
Heretofore our country has been swayed by H
sectional thoughts, either eastern or southern jH
thought has swayed it Mr. Lincoln was the only I
president of the whole country that we have ever jH
had, save Washington. Others have tried to be, I
but have never realized their own intentions. An ?H
unconscious prejudice or provincialism or section- H
al conviction has influenced them. H
By and by when the Mississippi valley has fl
doubled in population and financial power, it will jfl
produce men great enough to rise above all nar- M
row things and keeping in mind that the Great Re- fl
public, to be entirely great, must have no reproach-
es from any section, that all must be "parts of one H
tremendous whole," will realize that the people H
and their welfare, no matter where they hail from, jH
must be his perpetual concernment and solicitude ifl
that the land to be perfect must bo perfect H
everywhere. .. -H
Nothing New
A CCORDING to Professor M. Cobern, the offi-
cial lecturer of the Egyptian Exploration H
Fund, who has just returned from his ninth ex- 'H
ploration trip to Egypt, the explorations in that H
country make clear that about all the best of mod- !
em work is but a reproduction of what the Egyp- jjfl
tians did forty centuries ago; that the Bible state- !
ment that "Moses was learned in all the wisdom Ifl
of the Egyptians" means that he knew a world of IH
facts that modern men believe are but recent dis- H
coveries. M
Thus the explorers have found saws such as ijfl
the blocks in the pyramids were fashioned by. Jfl
These saws are six and seven-foot saws and their H
teeth are reinforced by an intensely hard black jM
substance greatly resembling carborundum. The IH
writer of this paid for the first false teeth put H
in a circular saw; the man who did the work H
posed on the achievement all hio life and did 19
not know that a forgotten Egyptian did the same JH
, , , .5&flfe. . jH