The Cincinnati Post (July 4, 1945)
Stokes: 169 years ago, we created a new nation – today a new world
By Thomas L. Stokes, Scripps-Howard staff writer
MACKINAC ISLAND, Michigan – When in the course of human events this day you are picking the ants out of the picnic lunch, or complaining that there’s no meat in the sandwiches, or pulling the bee sting out of Tommy’s foot or yelling to Jimmy not to go out too far, or telling Johnny to quit nagging Mary…
You probably won’t be thinking much of those men back in Philadelphia 169 years ago who, in Congress assembled, declared this a free and independent nation. Unless, that is, you are near a “speaking,” and someone says something about it.
Even then it is hard to put yourselves in their places and really feel what a bold and brave thing it was they did there.
You are more likely to be thinking about the young men of the family who are not here today. You may be thinking hopefully of the young man who may come back, or you may be longing deep down inside for the young man who can never come back. And you may recall when he was chasing around like Tommy and Jimmy and Johnny there.
That is what you are giving to hold what those other men did for us back there in Philadelphia. So, you really do understand, though you may not realize it. You and your sons and brothers and husbands and sweethearts are doing again, and just as boldly and bravely, just what those men back there and their kinsfolk and loved ones were doing. And time collapses across 169 years.
They started it all. They cast aside all the small affairs of their own little individual worlds, and, taking a long look into the future, decided to stand up and declare that men could be free and independent in a new government and society of their own making here in a new country.
It was no easy thing to do.
It was no easy thing either that you have done.
It was no easy thing to decide that it was your business to stand up and declare that tyranny should not exist in the world if you could help to overthrow it, which so many of you did in your hearts even before this nation was attacked. For it seemed so far away and none of our business and we seemed to be safe here behind our oceans. In that decision – and you knew it – you gave up yourselves and your sons and your brothers and your husbands and your sweethearts.
This is a day to celebrate this new declaration of independence on a larger stage, which grew out of that other one 169 years ago.
It is possible to make it the beginning of a whole new world, rather than just a new nation as was done at Philadelphia.
It will not happen tomorrow, or the day after, but it can happen.
What those men of Philadelphia planned did not happen in a few days, either, or a few years, but it has happened.
They struggled along through dark days when it looked as if a ragged army of 13 separate little nations could never throw off the yoke of an empire, even one far across the sea. They struggled along with a loose league of those 13 little nations as the governing authority, with some complaining about petty little things, and some holding back. They had no strong central authority and no way to be sure they’d ever have enough money to provide equipment and food to go on, and for long periods there was no pay for the soldiers.
They learned something from that experience about government. They gathered again, after a few years, and after much discussion to harmonize the differences of 13 little nations, to compromise the fears and rivalries and jealousies, they formed a union. It was a series of compromises, but it has worked through the years. We have changed it here and there, but the essence of the original remains.
Out in San Francisco the representatives of 53 nations got together and organized a league, or confederation. It is like the confederation we formed at the time of the Revolution. It is well for us to remember that. It does not compare with the union we created later with our Constitution. But it is a start, like our own preliminary and primitive Articles of Confederation.
Our own Constitution begins – “We the people of the United States…”
The San Francisco Charter begins – “We the peoples of the United Nations…”
There’s a difference – “people” and “peoples.”
There will certainly come a time and we can think of that this day of our new declaration of independence when we can make a very simple amendment – “We the people of the United Nations…”
