Editorial: America’s Independence Day symbol of freedom to world
Celebrating the 4th
It is now 167 years since a small group of men, representing 13 Colonies stretched along the Atlantic Seaboard, declared as a fundamental principle of government that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
On this anniversary of the birth of democracy in a new land, the American people may appropriately give some thought to the question of how faithful they have been to the ideals which found such brave expression in the moving words of Thomas Jefferson.
Have they been worthy of the men who pledged their all in order to build a new world based on an untried theory and of the men with flintlock guns who fought at Saratoga and Monmouth and Yorktown to translate this dream of freedom into reality?
Have the Americans of today, the inheritors of bright traditions, met the challenges of their times with the same spirit displayed in other crises – New Orleans, Gettysburg, Shiloh and the Argonne – when the cause of liberty hung in the balance and could be saved only by the shedding of the blood of young men on fields of battle?
These questions may be asked today without fear and answered truthfully and with pride. There has been no change in the breed of Americans since that memorable day in 1776, when 56 valiant men gathered in Philadelphia, cast off the yoke of kings and decided to fight for the fulfillment of their dreams.
The answers are to be found in the presence of eight million young Americans on a score of battlefronts in all parts of the world and in camps and on training grounds in their own land. They do not wear buff and blue or buckskin. They do not carry powder horns and long guns. Nevertheless, they are the spiritual kindred of these earlier Americans who, 167 years ago, shook the complacency of kings and gave a lift to the tired spirits of oppressed men everywhere.
This Independence Day of 1941 assumes a new significance and a new poignancy. Wherever the day is known – in the conquered lands of Europe, in China, even in Germany and Italy – it symbolizes freedom and democracy.
When the war has been won and a new world order has been shaped, something far different from that conceived in the mind of Hitler, who envisioned a master race and one of slaves, the dream of freedom that animated the 56 men in Philadelphia will become a thing of reality to millions who now live under the oppressor’s heel.