The Humboldt Republican from Humboldt, Iowa • Page 3

Friday, November 10,1939 THE HUMBOLDT REPUBLICAN. HUMBOLDT. IOWA PAGE FIVE 1918 Twenty-one Years 1939 GOMES OF AGE Just old enough to be drafted! Not a pleasant thought, is it? This thing that we fought to get-this Peace-is growing up. Today, It is twenty-one years old. Not old enough to have acquired wisdom, to be sure, but-certainly-old enough to begin to have a mind of Its own.

Peace, you see, is a very real thing. And- thank Heaven-It lives at our house. It sits down at the table with us and It sleeps with us at night. And when we lay our paper down or turn off our radio, we constantly realize that it is good to know that Peace is in the room. Life would not be the same without this silent partner to our living.

We know this. We know, too, that-while It is our strongest very existence depends upon us. Looking at Peace, as It rides with us in the car, laughs with us at our football games, plans with us for the holidays ahead, we can't help but realize that It is growing up to the dangerous age. For we knew Its father. He came to live with us around the end of the Spanish-American War, and the world of our living was blessed by His presence; but He was barely eighteen before we allowed the World to occupy us so much with its bickerings that we had no time for Him and He left us to suffer for our sin.

Will we make this same mistake again? Will we drive this new, young Peace out of our house? Or will we realize that throughout each and all of the twenty-one years we have enjoyed the presence of Peace, we have also been striving to bring It to full-fledged manhood with a future before It and the strength to carry on and that now is when It needs us most? If we, as the greatest united family of free people in the entire world, permit "the will to war" to enter into our minds, Peace will find life with us unbearable and leave us to our fate. For Peace is a positive thing. It cannot bear with weakness and middle-of-the-road indecision. If we say with our mouths that we will not fight, yet harbor in our breasts a conviction, born of timidity and fraught with futility, that we must inevitably fight, we will have broken faith with Peace. And when Peace forsakes us, we will no longer be the proud possessors of that courage which is greater than the courage to fight.

We will be destroyed in a maelstrom of self-deception, dying and suffering to regain that which we need never have lost. Peace is a harried child. Perhaps that is why we love It. For our household is composed of the persecuted from all the lands of the earth and we know that Peace is one of us. It is our son.

Upon It we may freely lavish our love. As It reaches Its twenty-first birthday, this Armistice Day, let us resolve to turn our backs upon that which is foreign to Peace and to us and set about the most monumental and glorious task ever undertaken in the history of humanity. the task of keeping and protecting Peace long enough-for once in the history of Man-to give It a chance to demonstrate to all humanity what Peace can do for the world. "This editorial was submitted to the American Legion at their 21st Annual National Convention in Chicago, September 24th to 28th, and referred to the Americanism Commission of the Department of Illinois. I am very happy to whole-heartedly endorse and approve the spirit and the context of "Peace (S i gned) srciutYMAN, of Comes of Age." the Americanism Coinialsalou, Dept.

of Illinois. SPONSORED BY THE AMERICAN LEGION. PAID FOR BY THE HUMBOLDT CHAMBER OF COMMERCE..