Vagabond Editorials

Bv Jack

God give us men. The time demands Strong minds, great hearts, true faith, and willing hands. Men whom the lust of office does not kill: Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy; Men who possess opinions and a will; Men who have honor; men who cannot lie; Men who can stand before a demagogue And damn his treacherous flatteries without winking; Tall men, sun-crowned, who live above the fog In public duty and in private thinking.

-J. G. Holland.

The other day an American citizen and public official who, in the past several years has been far underestimated by the public generally, who has, in fact been "belittled and belied" by those who. failed to properly appraise him, stepped up about a thousand notches in the esteem of his fellow countrymen. I speak of our own little grey-haired VicePresident of these United States, Jack Garner. The way he settled that Supreme Court infamy when he got back to Washington exceeds for pure efficiency and well-directed speed anything most of us can remember.

The famous Holland poem that heads this column was inspired by watching those eight heroes of the United States Senate hold the bridge against the packing of the Supreme Court. It is said that some of the greatest oratory in Senate history was offered the world by that group of men in arraying their defense against the Court pack. It has even been said that their oratory deserves tc be favorably compared with that mighty debate of the sixties when John C. Calhoun, South Carolina's master logician, faced those Titans of logic and of speech, Clay and Webster, to say nothing of Jackson himself. An Englishman who heard those old debates wrote back to the London Times saying:

Dionne

"History has no parallel. There has been nothing like it save the debates of Milton's angels."

It has often been ,"ia trl"t;; " great need arises, God raises the men to fill that need. That prophecy seems to have been proven by the uprising of those Senators when the very form of our government was threatened. The American nation must see to it that the:r splendid and courageous service be not forgotten, and that he who tries to punish them for their acts, shall himself be properly punished. Mr. Farley's threat that one of those men would sing a different tune when he comes looking for patronage should arouse the just indignation of every decent American.

It was Tennyson *n" *.*" t

"Oh well for him whose will is strongHe suffers, but he cannot suffer long, He suffers, but he cannot suffer wrong."

And some other great ;r;": whose name I cannot at this moment tongue, once said: "Never strike a sail to fear. Come into port greatly, or sail with God the seas." It was such heroic words that these members of the United Senate must have been thinking when they arrayed themselves against that coterie of strange thinkers who had theretofore been sweeping all before them.

Another great and *""U O*""can of the long ago, said: "Whenever in history the freedom of any people has been reduced, the first step in the progress of absolutism and decay has been to make them dependents upon Government favor and the public treasury." He must have been looking ahead with the mind of a prophet, then.

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