Forest City Courier, Sept. 12, 1940
One day last week our neighbor’s little two-year old boy lost three fingers in an accident. I was in the waiting room at the doctor’s office when he was brought in. He was not crying or even fretting in any way. As his brother carried him up the stairs, he was looking about and showing an interest in what was going on around him. Now, can you name any grown person who could do that? The sight of blood would have magnified the injury in the mind of an older child or an adult. In fact, many of us would have, as the old saying goes, “Been fit to be tied.” I don’t know whether you would call this child’s attitude courage or endurance, but it certainly comes in the category of heroic virtues. We think of courage as a grownup’s specialty, but the most courageous person I have seen in many a day was this child. We would do well to take lessons from children and quit being such babies ourselves.
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On Kate Smith’s broadcast recently she referred to the day as being the birthday of woman’s suffrage, or the anniversary of the day when women’s nation-wide participation in politics was put on an equal basis with men, and they were give the right to vote. To Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton goes the credit of having started a movement to having started a movement to secure a Constitutional amendment granting national suffrage to women. The amendment read as follows: “The right of the citizens of the United States to vote I shall not be denied or abridged by the United States, or by any state on account of sex.” Both houses of congress approved the amendment, but it had to be ratified by states. With much opposition it was finally carried through. To my way of thinking, that was a red letter day too. With elections not many months away, we women, with unshakable loyalty, can do lots to preserve the foundations of a mighty nation, and assure a glorious future for our country.
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The information I asked for last week in regard to the swastikas came post haste, from two sources. My sister-in-law and my son-in-law both gave me detailed facts about this symbol. The “swastika” of the Nazis is no swastika at all, but the “hooked cross of death.” If you take a cross with four equal arms and add a hook to the left of the top arm, and so on around, you get what the people of India call ‘su asti,’ which means, “it is good.” If you put the hooks to the right, the symbol is “kabeth asti”, meaning, “it is bad.” These foreign phrases are not understandable to me, but the plain English of “it is good” and “it is bad” needs no explanation. Therefore, we no longer wonder why Hitler chose that dread symbol. And as for the little piece of Indian pottery, well, it is due for a black-out.
Reprinted with permission from The Daily Courier. Copyright owned by The Daily Courier.
