Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 231, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 September 1920 — Americanism [ARTICLE]

Americanism

By LEONARD WOOD

PREAMBLE: Wo, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, 00. . tabliah. iuatico, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.—Preamble of the Constitution of the United States. IT is upon the rock of the Groat Document of which the preamble has been quoted, that our liberties are founded. The Constitution of the United States can be changed If tho people so desire, but its fundamentals of freedom never can be changed If liberty is to endure. The Constitution and Law and Order—the first means the other two end the other two mean the first. They are inseparable in their spirit and in their substance. The securing of the general welfare, which of .course includes the blessings of liberty, was the object of the framers of the Constitution of the United States. The work of the framers and of the adopting states has stood until this day, and in those of its provisions which touch the vital matter of the people’s liberty, it will stand for all time unless liberty is to leave us.

The Constitution was not adopted without trouble. Americans all but fought Over some of its provisions. In order, to secure its adoption It was necessary for the great minds of the country to bend their energies 'to tho proper interpretation of its provisions in order that the people thoroughly might understand them and know be-., yond peradventure that liberty was safeguarded to the utmost by the pro-. posed pact There were men who thought sincerely that freedom was put in jeopardy by the Constitution. Those who so felt were unable rightly to interpret for themselves either the letter er the spirit of this wort of the Fathers. The Constitution should be better understood by the youth of America. The story ofc its framing, of the struggle for its adoption and its final sanction is not dry reading. From the Constitution one gets the spirit ot Americanism. The Constitu tton is the Safeguard of bur country, the bulwark of our freedom. On It all our laws are based. Outside of it there can be no legal or orderly procedure. Outside of It there can be no Americanism.