THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA
The news in this publica
tion is released for the press on
receipt.
NEWS LETTER
Published weekly by the
University of North Carolina
for its Bureau of Extension.
DECEMBER 11, 1918
CHAPEL HILL, N. C.
VOL. V, NO. 5
Editorial Board i E. O. Branson, J. G. deR. Hamilton, L. R. Wilson, B. H. Thornton, Q. M. McKie.
Entered as second-class matter November 14,1914, at the iPostofflce at Chapel Hill, N. C., under the act of August 24,1912.
IF IT WERE YOUR CHILD 1
Speaking of World Belief AVork, why
not vary ,lohn Knox’s phrase of fervent
gratitude and say to yourself, That, but
for the grace of God might have been
my child?
The country women of European lands
rarely carry their babies in their arms.
Baby rides in a wicker basket strapped
to mother’s back, knapsack-wise, while
mother goes her way crocheting lace, or
knitting, and singing—or so it was be
fore the war.
How is it now?
A returning Bed Cross worker tells how
he was taken through stricken Poland.
Along the roads, throughout the land,
wherever he went he saw long lines of
baskets rotting on the ground.
Asking the meaning of them he was
told of this custom of the European coun
try women, and then he was told how the
harried, driven folk, retreating before
the invader, lagged in weariness, stum
bled from weakness, fell fainting, starv
ing, dying by the way.
The wan babies, hanging from their
mother’s withered breasts, in Henry
•Grady’s phrase, fainted and perished.
As they died, the exhausted mothers laid
down the little bodies, so light, so worn
away to skin and bone, laid them down
in the now useless baskets, and left them
80. The tale runs into millions for Po
land alone.
Poland is bereft of children. Not one
is left under five years of age. But in
•other European lands other European
children cry to us for food, and food w'e
must send them, regularly, steadily, and
for years to come lest they perish.—E. N.
WORLD RELIEF WORK
The first week in December is the week
set apart by the Federal Food Adminis
tration for World Relief Work. So we
learn as we go to the printers with this
issue of the News Letter.
The people of the United States must
be brought to realize that the need to
conserve food is many times more im
portant now than ever it was during the
four years of war.
On Sunday, December 1, the ministers
nre asked to read Hoover’s message and
■warning in all the churches of the land.
Dn Tuesday the 3d, Community Mass
Meetings everywhere are called to con
sider the menace of famine in Europe,
and on Friday the 7th the alarm is to be
sounded in every school in special pro
grams of instruction and exhortation.
The call to instant, active service is to
the women of America—the housewives
and the women’s organizations of every
-sort. The programs of War Relief Week
are their job. If they fail to rise to the
occasion, they fail in a critical emergen
cy in the history of mankind.
It is theirs to see that the World Relief
Week accomplishes its full purpose in
America.
Hunger Breeds Anarchy
The war against autocracy has been
won. . The war against famine and an
archy is just beginning.
Advices to the State Department seem
clearly to indicate, says William Hard,
that alt Europe from the Urals to the
Alps may soon have to be surrendered to
socialism of some sort.
Russia and central Europe are gaunt
■with hunger. The facts are only just now
coming to light. In Poland there are no
children under five years of age. They
■are all dead from starvation.
Gh'astly famine stalks abroad in the
■war-curst areas of Europe, and hunger
now threatens to slay many millions more
than the instruments of war have done.
Revolutions have always begun in bread
riots, and they have always been headed
by ‘Rachel crying for her children.’
Famine means anarchy. Anarchy in cen
tral and eastern Europe means anarchy
in western Europe. And anarchy in
Euroi>e means anarchy in America.
Nothing else on earth has ever been as
contagious as anarchy.
The French Revolution began in star
vation. In one province, said Arthur
Young, 30,000 peasants lay dead or dy
ing in the fields with grass in their
mouths. The spark that set the fires of
revolt ablaze-was struck by mobs of hun
gry women. The spirit of revolt swept
every country in Europe like a forest con
flagration.
And the job of social fire control in Eu
rope, thereafter, was a half-century job.
The fires of social revolution. were never
wholly extinguished. Ever since they
have been smoldering fires in every coun
try of Europe, ready to blaze out afresh
and never more certainly than now.
Is the world of our day to be enveloped
in turn by universal conflagration?
• Anarchy—Bolslievism, I. AV. AVism,
whatever you call it—threatens to sweep
the earth with revolution. Fools do not
fear it. Fools are always fearless. But
wise men fear it—fear it exceedingly. The
leading article in the Literary Digest of
Nov. 23 tells in detail how greatly they
fear it in every land and country.
The ships of state are all afloat on
troubled seas. Keeping this old world on
even keel the next half century is a job
for giants.
Fundamentally it’s a famine job. AVe
must fight famine with food, and slay
anarchy with bread.
A Self-Defensive Fight
North and South America, New Zea
land and Australia must feed Europe, or
Europe faces famine and Bolshevism.
Stabilizing the food conditions of the
world is a six-year task, at the very least,
under the best conditions, says Mr.
Hoover.
More than ever before we must waste
nothing. Everything must be saved—
especially dairy feeds, dairy products,
and fats. These are the crying needs of
Europe today and for many days to come.
If Germany must be fed, then we must
feed Germany—if not for Germany’s sake
then for America’s sake; and we must do
it in sheer self-defense. This is no time
for sentiment. It’s a time for sense, and
the time to be sensible is now.
Save dairy feeds, dairy products and
fats of every sort. That’s the word that
must be sounded in every home in the
land!
That’s the slogan of the AVorld Relief
Week.—E. C. B.
THE NEW DAY IN ENGLAND
“It is not only the new women elec
tors,’’ continues the London Daily Mail,
whom the old wirepullers have to fear.
There is a new world with a new atmos
phere, a new outlook, new issues, new
problems, new conditions. New men
are needed to interpret the new
meanings of politics. The old players of
the old game have passed or are passing
one by one into obscurity. The lights
that seemed to burn so brightly when the
present parliament was elected are extin-
gushed or have dwindled into guttering
candle-ends. The old shibboleths and
definitions are empty, meaningless sounds.
The party wirepuller’s old stock-in-trade
is obsolete and he has nothing ready or
in sight with which to replace it.—Ex
change.’’
THE RIGHTS OF MAN
Edmund BurKe
Civil society is made for the advan
tage of man. All the advantages for
which it is made become his right.
Civil society is an institution of be
neficence. Law is only beneficence
acting by rule.
Each man has a right to do sepa
rately for himself whatever he can
without trespassing upon others.
And he has a right to a fair portion
of all that socity can do for him, with
all its combinations of skill and force.
to the same old tune.
There are disturbing symptoms all over
Europe which we at home would be wise
to take note of and provide against. I
have been scanning the horizon and I
can see flashes on the sky ■^vhich indicate
to me that there are grave atmospheric
disturbances in the social and economic
world. In the natural world you cannot
avert the storm by thinking. In the more
artificial world of human society you can,
if you take things in time, avert the hur
ricane.
I have one word of advice to my coun
trymen, and I say it solemnly to them:
Take heed in time, and if you do we shall
enjoy settled weather for the great har
vest which is coming when the fierce heat
of summer which is beating upon us in
this great war shall be over and past.—
Recent speech in London.
AS LLOYD GEORGE SEES IT
AVe must pay more attention to our
schools. The most formidable institution
we had to fight in Germany was not the
arsenals of Krupp or the yards in which
they turned out submarines, but the
schools in Germany. They are our most
formidable competitors in business and
our most terrible opponents in war. An
educated man is a better worker, a more
formidable warrior and a better citizen.
That was only half comprehended here
before the war.
It is idle to contend that this vast con
vulsion has taught us nothing. Men who
learn nothing are fitted for nothing, and
they certainly ought not to be employed
in the settlement of after-war problems,
because they are dangerous men. Do not
turn your backs on the future nor dote
on the present. You will forgive me
when I say I see that kind of doting in
and around the sheds where the party
machines have been rusting during the
war. I can hear sounds of elaborate
preparation for setting up the old merry-
go-round. That would give men the il
lusion that they are prancing at a terrific
speed when they are really circling
around the same old clanking machine
DEMOCRACY AND DOLLARS
3. As the war now seems to be on the
last lap, our democracy and dollars shine
with intense, brilliancy upon the sky of
the world—a rainbow of hope almost
realized to our allies, a flaming sword of
destruction to our enemies.
AVhen the war has finally come to an
end, will American democracy and Amer
ican dollars be able to make such a pro
found impression upon the thought of the
world—upon the leaders of the nations
as they assemble to fix the boundaries of
nations now on the map and of those to
be put upon the map?
AVhen the war is no longer, will Amer
ican democracy and American dollars
work with such tremendous earnest
ness for the maintenance of justice amorrg
the peoples of other nations and among
ourselves as they have worked for many
months in the strength of battle? AVhen
peace has been re-established, will Amer
ican democracy and American dollars be
able to play such a big vital part in the
building of the political security and the
economic prosperity of the peoples of the
world as they have played in the de
struction of a military might which has
been guided by the brains of selfish
and brutal men?
AVhen the war is over, when the soldier
has returned to the ordinary tasks of
making a living, will American democ
racy and American dollars work so en
thusiastically for the promotion of justice
between our own people as they have
struggled to bring the opportunity of fair
dealings between the peoples of other na
tions?—Charles L. Raper.
e(]uitable division between capital and
labor.
But no Bolshevism, no failure to pro
tect alike property and labor, no class
domination that lends itself to injustice
or wrong can flourish on this continent.
Justice presides over both the rights of
man and his rights of property.
There will be no place in this new world
for the leadership either of timid men
or those who grasp at the shadows of
issues which the war has relegated to the
scrap heap. The man who prates of doc
trines good in an isolated country will
have empty benches for an audience.
During the war we have not hesitated
at any action, however radical it 'was re
garded by conservatives in other times,
that would help to win the war. AVe have
employed weapons both ancient and
modern. Some of our men are wearing
coats of mail, others are mounting the
heavens. The javelin of the cave dweller
has its place with the latest concoction of
poisonous gas.
Even so, in the ne-vv time now shortly
at hand, our real leaders will be those
who will not reject a method or a princi
ple because it is old or embrace it because
it is new. AVe will prove all things in or
der that we may hold fast only that
which is good for a heritage to be handed
down by the generation that stood in its
lot in these days and saved the civilized
world.
AVe have had but one principle since
the President in the halls of Congress gave
expression to the national conviction that
the course of the German Empire de
manded that America must make the
world safe for democracy. AA^e are en
listed with all that we have and are until
the objects stated by the President shall
have been achieved.
America After the War
AS DANIELS SEES IT
The world, after peace shall have been
won, will not go back to conditions such
as existed prior to our entrance into the
mighty struggle, says Hon. Josephus
Daniels, Secretary of the Navy. AVhat
labor earns will find its way into the
pockets of labor. New conditions will
impose new duties. Statesmanship of
■vision will create new opportunities for
American commerce and guarantee labor
the sweat of its brow. Political shibbo
leths that men heeded in 1916 are as dead
as the mummies of Egypt, and public
men who try to galvanize them will be
interred in the catacombs that overlook
Salt River.
This war is fundamental. Its effect
will be to change everything. Trade and
commerce and finance will seek new and
broader fields, bigger men and nobler
standards. The large returns from farm
and factory will not go to the few, but
will be apportioned to men of brain and
brawn in proportion to the value of their
contribution. There will be a more
And then—and then, what? AVill we
return to the methods and thoughts and
policies of pre-war days? The man who
supposes he will ever again live in a
world like that which existed prior to
the war has read history to little purpose.
AVe will not be afraid in peace to do revo
lutionary things, seeing we have become
accustomed to doing them during the war.
AVhat shape will our after the war rad
icalism take? No man is wise enough to
prophesy; but it is safe to say our first
and imperative duty here in America is
to make democracy safe for {he world.
It would be the tragedy of tragedies if
after our sacrifices to make the world safe
for democracy our democracy would not
be of a brand to bless the world. It must
be purged of all class distinction, of every
vestige of privilege, of every hoary-beard
ed tradition that fetters justice. It must
be a democracy such as Jefferson formu
lated and Lincoln enforced. Its standard
must be equal rights to all, special privi
leges to none.
This generation must live in the spirit
of Jefferson and Lincoln but it must not
be bound by policies that suited their
day. AVe will not be called upon to fight
primogeniture and the union of Church
and State and foreign control which Jef
ferson successfully opposed. Human slav
ery, which Lincoln ended for the good of
both races and the glory of his country,
no longer needs to be opposed. But let
us not doubt that there will be lions in
our path if we tread the hard road of du
ty. Profiteers in war, worse than slack
ers and cowards, will not be easily routed
in peace.
Invoking the spirit of patriotism, giant
evils will follow this as all other wars.
Eternal vigilance will still be the price of
liberty. Men more careful -to preserve
the status quo of 1914 than to secure
equal and exact justice will not be want
ing. There will be as much need for
courage to fight for real democracy when
peace smiles as there is need now to op
pose German aggression. But the spirit
of hostility to absolutism will burn strong
in the breasts of the millions of the young
men returning victorious from the Rhine.
They will have cut their war through
shell and barb wire to Berlin, and they
will come back home with the high re
solve that America shall give them and
their fellows the kind of country that is
worthy of their heroism. This is our faith
The heroes of today in the trenches must
be heroic in civil life, at the ballot box
and in the halls of legislation tomorrow.
The Ralers of America
AVho will control America for the next
generation? It will be the men who fought
on land and sea, delved in the mine,
plowed the furrows, built ships, forged
war weapons, and in other ways were
fully enlisted in the war, forgetting ease,
comfort, profit, remembering only that
they were enlisted in the war and for, the
war. Only they will be worthy to control
America. Understand me: I would not
be so unjust as to give exclusive credit
to those "who wear the uniform of the ar
my or navy, or those who are doing the
herculean labors back of our soldiers and
sailors.
AVe have another class to which we
must do honor. I refer to the good men
and women, the boys and girls, who
would readily take up arms if their coun
try would call them, or who would take
their places by forge and furnace, or in
mine or on deck, were they so assigned,
but whose places are less conspicuous.
Many of these, I know, are longing for
more emphatic connection with the war;
but let them be comforted—if in their
daily labors they are doing what our
country desires them to do and doing it
with all their might, they too deserve the
name of patriot. The housekeeper at her
canning and knitting, the father on the
downward slope of the years, the daugh
ter, the son, each has a duty, each a
place in this great struggle, and the test
is, after all, not what station did one oc
cupy, but did you occupy the station
where your service was greatest, and did
you do therein your full duty?
That world in which we shall live will
apply the acid test to every man who
asks trust or confidence. “AVhat did you
do from April 6, 1917, to win the great
victory?’’ and woe to the man of strength
who cannot say, “I gave myself, my life,
my all in the service where the selective
draft placed me.” If he cannot truly say
this, it were better for him that a mill
stone were hanged about his neck and he
were cast into the midst of the sea.
How They Will Rule
AA’^hatlwill these men who have wrought
well in furnace or trenches or on the sea
do when they come into their own? They
will stand for justice, for law and order.
Anarchy, Bolshevism, privilege, preda
tory business cannot escape their wrath.
They will have a world-vision and will
demand a treaty with all self-governing
nations to preserve the peace of the
world, and will maintain a powerful navy
to help enforce the decrees of the tribunal
they wBl set up. They will eontinute to
enlarge the merchant marine so that
American bottoms will carry American
goods and exchange products with every
nation and with all the isles of the sea.
They will be less concerned as to whether
this is by public or private ownership
than with securing and enlarging world
wide commerce.
The odds are that they will see in Gov
ernment ownership and direction the best
agency, but they will discard that if pri
vate ownership insures the best results.
They will never return to duplication of
railroad transportation and competition
in terminals and facilities. All the bene
fits which Government operation of rail
roads have given will be continued,
whether the railroads are in public or
private ownership.
The telephone and telegraph will prob
ably be a permanent part of the Postal
Service, though the men who will then
rule America will be open-minded
enough to discuss the best method of com
munication. The lessons of sanitation
and war on drink and immoral disease
will insure to the civilian population as
great care and as strenuous effort in the
methods of prevention and cure as war
has taught are needed for men under
arms.—N. Y. Times.
Those men will have little patience
with the how-not-to-do-its and the bet-
ter-stick-to-the-old-way apostles and apol
ogists. Men who have dug trenches un
der the fire of the enemy, stood on de
stroyers unafraid when struck by tor
pedoes, endured privation in the armies,
and toiled to weariness on the farm and
in the factory to win the war—these men
will base their creed upon the Declara
tion of Independence and the Treaty of
Peace, and the meif who wish to build
high walla to make an isolated America
or turn national wealth into selfish chan
nels will be little heeded in the forward
march as these men make America truly
democratic, where all men have equal op
portunity, and where no man can take
from the mouth of labor the bread it has
earned, or challenge the worth of one
who in such a time as this did his duty
in the cause of mankind.—Indianapolis
Address.