Evening Star Newspaper, June 29, 1930, Page 73

Fiction Books ~ PART 7. The Sundiy Shat Magasine WASHINGTON, D. C, JUNE 29, 1930. Features Puzzles e 24 PAGES. Not All Firecrackers! HE Fourth of July! 1 Even now the mention : of that date brings back to me memories of seething excitement. To all of us children, next to Christ- mas, the Fourth was the most adventurous moment of the year. We little boys had a bar- barous way of celebrating it. For us the day began at 12:01 a.m. At that time we crawled out of our respective beds, pulled on our clothes and without a backward glance at toothbrush or soap, stole soft- ly down the stairs. After load- ing ourselves with packages of firecrackers, we hopped off to meet our cousins at some appointed rendezvous, each contingent heralding its ap- proach with whatever might be the agreed signal—whistle or owl hoot Then together we could steal through the pitch-black wood paths, feeling much like explorers in a far land. In turn we would visit the houses of the neighbors, signaling our advent by a fusillade of fire- crackers. The hazards were delightful. - At any moment some dog might spring Snari- ing at us from the shadow of a bush, and bare "legs seemed very unprotected. The climax was generally capped when some poor householder, thor- oughly infuriated, would burst out of the door in his pajamas, Then we would scuttle into the srrounding darkness like rabbits diving into a briar patch. Once my cousins’ fa- ther, in the interest of more amicable relations with his neighbors, forbade his sons to go They went just the same, That morning we were walk- “ing home through a wood .path flecked with c¢lear Sum- mer sunlight when the sound of some one whistling caught our attention. Looking up, we saw their father coming toward us, strolling along slapping his leg with a riding switch. Something told us that one of those intimate family dramas was about to be enacted. One little boy said, “Gee!” and with one ac- cord the rest of the contingent turned tail, leaving our poor cousins confront- ed by their approaching doom. We felt that if we stayed we might by some error be included in what was coming. : A thousand other memories come -thronging back, ranging from the time “one of my brothers inadvertently sat * on a giant firecracker that was about to " explode to the time when we set . Smith’s field on fire and had to form an . amateur fire brigade. Father and mother, however, did not believe that the Fourth should mean . to us merely firecrackers and fun.-They _ felt most strongly that in-addition we should be made to realize the greater significance of the celebration. To my way of thinking, we in this country are too prone to believe our obligations dis- a g o ‘) Where July 4 became & national holiday — Independence Hall, in Philadelphia. charged by lip service. We feel that the observance of this national holiday means merely parades with local brass bands and orations. Of course, these count for nothing unless they sym- bolize a deeper consciousness on’ our part. < Personally I have reached the point - where I instinctively distrust the gene tleman who gets up and announces in thunderous tones that he is a 100 per cent red-blooded American. As a rule, such a man is satisfied merely with the statement and does not consider it necessary to turn it into action. Words are splendid if they are used to stir con= BY THEODORE ROOSEVELT, Governor General of Porto Rico. sciousness or prompt a line of conduct, but in themselves alone they are of no value, That is where we make our mis- take. 'We mix the means with the end. We feel that the celebration is all that’s necessary, much the way some of the savage tribes I have known considered that an offering to their gods atoned for any type of conduct. _We join the crowd, sit in the audi- enceand applaud the speaker, but hard- ly one in ten of us realizes that this ap- plause is most meaningless unless it predicates action. - One ounce of action outweighs in value all the applause from one end of the country to the .tend them more, other. A national czlebra- tion, if properly understood, should carry with it much of the significance of a service in church. In it we recall the high deeds of the past and pledge ourselves solemnly to conduct ourselves so in the coming year that we may be worthy of the idcals that prompted them and th¢ sacrifices they entailed. A} good motto for us would beg “Act as you cheer!” As I see it, on the IFourth of July we celebrate the ideals of our great Republic--ideals of freedom, justice and equali- ty of opportunity to which the founders dedicated our na« tion. Those are the thoughts which should run through our minds during the day, . Concretely, today we “have an illustration of needed action on our part, in so far as the island of Porto Rico goes. That island has 1.500.000 people who are American citie zens and loyal American citis zens. It is but 100 miles long by 35 miles in width. Those fellow American citizens of ours are now struggling une der a heavy burdén. They are scourged by disease ; pove erty is their constant come panion, and economic condie tions are desperate. The in= sular revenues, though we are devoting 40 per cent of them to education, are suffi« cient to provide only approxi= mately 38 per cent of the chil- dren of school age with op- portunity for schooling. Our Porto Rican fellow citi- zens are fine people. They are fully capable of taking advan- tage of any opportunity they, have. Our mission must be to endeavor ‘to adjust thingg in such a fashion that they have the chances in life tg which we like to feel every; American citizen is entitledy They can and will make good, but just at present, due to cir- cumstances, they cannot cre- ate the chance for themselves, They need help. Congress has extend- ed them aid, but Congress should exe In addition, we are organizing an appeal to private individ« uals to furnish us with the money to -feed the starving children and to fight tuberculosis, hookworm and: malaria, from one or more of which diseases three-quarters of the people are suffer- ing. We are striving for a constructive program which willbplace Porto Rico in the future in a position where she can take care of herself from her own resources. If we in this country really, mean the words*we'repeat and the ap- “plause we give to the orators’ well turried phrases on the Fousth of. July, we can show our faith by ‘endeavoring to see these million and a" half of American citizens get the chances in life that the founders of the Nation bge lieved every citizen should have.