The Meaning of Independence
By Editor
Soon the Fourth of July with its boom and rattle and roar will be upon us. Spread-eagle orators will declaim. Chinese fire-crackers and all sorts of fireworks will be burned by the millions, and Young America and Old America, too, for the matter of that, will have a good time for a few hours, save those of burned fingers, broken limbs, powder-burned faces, blinded eyes, and the mourning of friends for their dead. After the day of "patriotic" dissipation is over, the reaction comes. We have no condemnation for those who find that their highest enjoyment, as Lincoln remarked of a certain thing, "for those who like that sort of thing that is about the sort of thing they would like." Such a manner of celebration is more often the impulse and indulgence of the flesh instead of a patriotic celebration. Independence and liberty are glorious things in which all who enjoy them should rejoice; and we do praise God for a free country. But all who enjoy liberty should also think of the other man who may be deprived of its blessings. Lowell has truly said that "They are slaves most base
Whose love of right is for themselves,
And not for all the race." While we cheer for Independence, we ought to ask ourselves what it means. When we shout for the Flag, we ought to remember what it symbolizes; that it stands for the broadest civil and religious liberty for the individual consistent with the equal rights of all; that the oppression of one is the oppression of all; that the restriction of the rights and liberties of one is the restriction of the rights and liberties of all. Forgetting these things, and the Fourth of July is but a condemning tradition, and the Flag but a tricolored, meaningless cloth thrown to the breeze. It is not traditions which make men and nations, but living principles.