Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 237, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 October 1920 — Americanism [ARTICLE]

Americanism

By LEONARD WOOD

Interweven as is the lava of liberty with every ligament of your hearts, no recommendation of mine is necessary to fortify or confirm your attachment. — George Washington: Farewell Address. George Washington took it for granted that the love of liberty was so etsong in the hearts of his countrymen that it could not be uprooted. He took it so much for granted that he said that no recommendation of bls was necessary to confirm their attachment.

Washington was speaking to all his fellow countrymen. He took no thought with Individuals, here, there or elsewhere. There was no one in whose heart*the love of liberty was not firmly implanted. It must have been grateful to the first president to be able to believe that his audience et Americans was as one person in patriotic impulse and in affection for the land of his birth or his adoption. Today it still should be taken for granted that all Americans love liberty and are willing to sacrifice their all for its continuance.

Aa a group of people Americans are sound to the core in their Americantan. They love liberty today as well as they did in the days of Washington, apd they are Just as ready to make the sacrifices necessary to maintain it While Washington did not allow himaelf even by inference to make it appear that he thought anywhere there might be a break In the line of liberty lovers, he probably knew that even in his day there were Americans who thought that Jlberty meant Ucense, and that restraint of personal conduct had no place in a republic. ’There were such persons in the republic in Washington's day, and they have had a place in the country’s life during the terms of every president since Washington. They are with us today. some of them born here and some of them born elsewhere, but all with a feeling based on selfishness, for there is no belief in it, that unbridled freedom should be the lot of every man Bn d woman living under democratic institutions. It is from the ranks of such men as these that are recruited the preachers of unrest, the inciters to violence nnd the actual partakers of violent deeds. Law and order, the Constitution. regard for property rights, and other things sacred to true Americans, have no place tn the creed of such as these.