The Pittsburgh Press (October 30, 1941)
I DARE SAY —
Over Hitler like a tent
By Florence Fisher Parry
It was grand to read Raymond Clapper’s rebuke to Americans in the current Life. He’s ashamed of us, all right. He had to get away for awhile to realize how great we are as a people and a country, but he sure doesn’t underrate us now!
We swallowed the legend that Hitler is invincible. We… figured out how we could settle down into the role of a second-rate nation, hemmed in on both oceans… He says this and a good deal more.
We are impressed in a childish way with their propaganda, although the slickest propaganda in the world comes out of American advertising.
He could have said that Hitler was beaten the moment he conceived world domination in terms of machines. Look out the window on any street or highway, at our youngsters driving fearful horsepower, each kid at home at the wheel, and laugh your heads off the idea of Hitler licking us.
With machinery? Ha, ha!
American advertising IS the slickest propaganda on earth. It is fast becoming the very bible of the American reader. You might not read books, brother, but you’re bound to read the ads. You can’t get away from them. And if you want to hold out for good literature, they still contain far and away the most concise, economical and imaginative writing produced today.
Here in my desk, as I write, lies the most beautiful and informative magazine published. I refer to Fortune. A fair gauge of its value is the absolute inability of any of its subscribers to throw this magazine away. Saved over a period of time, its advertising matter alone chronicles the most brilliant era in American manufacture in our whole history.
There’s no way to estimate the actual propaganda value of the contribution that American advertisers have made to our defense effort. However critical and uneven has been the civilian and editorial support of the administration in its foreign and domestic policies, the American advertiser has given unanimous and brilliant support!
“Production! Production!” thunders from every advertising page of our magazine today. And it would seem to me that the propaganda department in Germany could well tremble in its boots upon perusal of this spontaneous and united evidence of our national intention.
He who laughs last
The brasses of industry are awakening the consciousness of the American populace in a way that no other single effort has been able to do. When I read in the ads about gasoline, motor cars, steel, belts and screws, chemicals, raw materials, then only do I receive the true impact of our defense problem.
Indeed, I have cause to chuckle now and again as I think what a complete justification this provides the Daughters of the American Revolution, those first disciples of United States defense, who for the last quarter of a century have been ridiculed and reviled, made sport of by our cartoonists and columnists, and caricatured by at least one great American painter.
If ever a cause was vindicated, if ever a purpose was sanctified, it’s the DAR! This valiant group of American Daughters has stood its ground against unrelenting persecution. If ever a woman had reason to rise and say “I told you so,” it is you, Daughter of the American Revolution!
I often wonder, when I hear criticism of the DAR how much its hecklers really know of its actual activities and accomplishments. Its objects are so pure and fine: To perpetuate the memory and the spirit of the men and women who achieved our American independence; To enlighten public opinion. To cherish American freedom. To foster true patriotism; and to aid in securing for mankind all the blessings of liberty.
Let the record speak
In achievement? They brought the first women nurses to the Army and Navy in the Spanish-American War. They advanced the first program in anti-aircraft gunnery. They built, own and are the sole support of several schools in the Mountain South. They provide countless historic sites, preserve records, compile historical data. They have always preached national defense and preparedness.
They have admitted into their society more than 300,000 members. They are of tremendous assistance in active war relief. They have rendered up their entire membership for home defense in any type of service they can best render.
They give full aid to the Red Cross in services and in gifts of money. They were the first to supply blood for processing into plasma, thus safeguarding the lives of our men in the United States Navy. They support the full British War Relief activities, the United Service Organizations. They have established recreation rooms near camps.
They have participated wholeheartedly in the drive for home defense bonds. They have established many educational scholarships. They have taught us to respect our United States flag. They prepared the first adequate manual for citizenship. They have a student loan fund, from which 800 students were granted loans this last year. They have established settlement houses, clubs for junior Americans. They have been active in tree conservation. They contributed one-half a million dollars to the American Red Cross last year. They have taught good citizenship to immigrants.
Their record is one of signal accomplishment, pure purpose, and high American idealism.
Shame on him who would make an attempt to belittle them!