A THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK
Blow, bugles of battle, the marches of peace;
... East, west, north, and south let the long quarrel cease;
“Sing a song of great joy that the lr began,
- Sing the glory to God and of good-will to man!
WHITTIER—Christmas Carmen.
The celebration: of Christmas is so universal and yet so intimate that it
can, and does, provide the inspiration for hundreds of newspaper editorials
at this time of the year. It is the one time of the year
A when newspapers devote their space whole-heartedly and
THOUGHTFUL enthusiastically to the church and i significance.
CHRISTMAS Since most of the editorials will be writtrn expressly
for those who celebrate the holiday as a part of their reli-
>
0% i oom; we should like to write this one for those people who, through accident
of birth or the other iysterfons. factors which determine our religious beliefs,
cannot believe as we do.
Primarily, Christmas 1s a religious holiday, but as the anniversary of an
historic date it has another significance, too, for though the Man from Nazar-
eth came to found a new religion he came, too, to preach a social philosophy
toward which all creeds, all/races have been moving slowly for 1900 years.
Man may deny the divinity of Jesus Christ, but no thinking person can
deny the fundamental logic nor the soulful philosophy which the Gallilean
preacher advanced on the hillsides of Judea. Until the last star of the universe
fades those doctrines must stand—for Christians and non-Christians—as Truth.
oe If we were a Jew, a Mohammedan, a Buddhist or a Taoist this week we
1 should have a ‘Christmas of our own kind in which—without ritual, without
presents, without tinselled-tree—we should celebrate simply and with thought-
ful reflection the birthday anniversary of Jesus of Nazareth.
~~ Jesus of Nazareth—a man who numbered among his friends sinners,
prostitutes and lowly persons, a man who, though tolerant himself, preached a
doctrine so radical it alarmed Romans into killing Him, a man who refused a
crown and disappointed a people who expected Him to found a kingdom with a
_ sword, a Man who—divine or no—was so far ahead of his times that the
‘world still is struggling toward his ideal. 2
#
Because voters in Luzerne Cs have long been conscious of a confusion
and ineffectiveness about local WPA matters, the charges made by Edward N.
Jones, Works Progress Administrator for Pennsylvania, i in
: NOW,
WHO GETS tion.
THE BLAME?
fx tizens might consider Mr. Jones's statement: “There is not
Ya single administrative member of the relief staff in Luzerne County who does
not owe his job either to Judge Fine, Ambrose. Langan, “Tug” Burns or Mor-
gan Bird”.
The presence of politics in the relief structure becomes more understand-
able if, as Mr. Jones says, our local administration is being controlled by the
shrewd, erstwhile fisuisnonts of The Great Pinchot.
: $d % *
© Appropos of iE country’s insistence upon tangling: itself up in foreign
affairs, we might answer the question of one of our correspondents, who, after
; commenting on The Post’s peace campaign, asks “What
WHAT must we do to stay out of wars.’
IS The question is one good enough to deserve a better
NEUTRALITY? answer. When all is said and done, though, we suspect
that this country gets into wars because its people love a
fight. We find it very difficult to stay out of European squabbles. In the brief
life-time of these United States there have been just two general European
wars. This country became involved in both. In one we managed to get in-
volved twice, and on both sides—probably a record.
~ Despite their fervent claims to neutrality, the people of this country’ are
never really neutral in temper. Who stands for Italy here today?
Perhaps the first thing to do in staying out of war is to remember that
neutrality implies more than official statements 2 Washington.
We are a bit bewildered over the current excitement concerning the
country’ s participation in the Olympic games at Berlin next year . . . bewildered
at the mystic connection between muscles “and human
STATE rights.
DEPARTMENT It is admitted, of course, that Hitler's policies are
ATHLETICS un-American and that he has excluded Jews from Ger-
many’s team. We deplore that. But after all, it is his coun-
ty dod very little of our business. Its only a matter gf seventeen years since
we were killing German Jews.
These passionate crusades to inflict our opinions upon other peoples gen-
erally get us inta trouble. It did in 1812 with Great Britain and in 1798 with
France. There is always the possibility that we are not perfect in every phase
of human rights. We should be the first to resent correction by another country.
We may be wrong, but we cannot understand why this country’s team
cannot go over there next year, win its usual victories, and come back home
without volving the State departments of both countries in their races and
2 swimming matches. j
THE BUSINESS WEEK
This surve;r of business coauditions during the last seven days is com-
piled by The Post from business figures furnished by the United
States Department of Commerce.
Country holiday buying entered its final period with a considerably larger
~ volume than last year . . . Some wholesale lines were already feeling the ef-
fects of Spring ordejs . . . Holiday lines werejrunning low ad a result of heavy
refill orders from retailers . . . leading department stores in New York showed
a losd in business from last year due to the fact that there was abnormal buy-
ing in anticipation of the sales tax which went into effect December 10, 1934
. Earlier than normal gift buying was reported in rural communities, attri-
buted to the increased buying power of farmers . . . Citrus fruits were moving
in heavy volume North from Florida . . . Residential building for the first
eleven months was up 85 per cent . . . The Automobile Manufacturers’ Asso-
ciation estimated automobile output for the year at 4,150,000 units, a gain of
45 per cent over 1934 . . . Steel industry activity relaxed slightly, but a steel
executive predicted a decided increase in the first quarter of 1936 . . . Rail-
roads are expanding . . . Pennsylvania Railroad ordered 10,000 new freight
cars to cost $25,000,000 . . . In Cleveland industrial payrolls were running
$9,000,000 a month more than last year, with 10,000 more men working . . .
Actual housing shortages were reported in Wilmington and Cleveland . .
Postal receipts and mail order sales were up . . . Montgomery Ward reported
an all-time record in November . . . Sales of General Motors cars in Novem-
ber were three times greater than last November and largest for a November
in the history of the company . . . Private industry and WPA projects con-
tinued to absorb increasing numbers of employables . . . The United States
exported $221,237,929 of merchandise in October, Sompared with $206,413,
0683 in the same month last year.
ESTABLISHED 1889
TheDallasPost
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HowARD RISLEY
HowegLL REEs
‘TRUMAN STEWART
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Managing Editor
Mechanical a
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Entered as second-class matter at the Dallas Post Office.
THE DALLAS POST is a youthful weekly rural-suburban news-
paper, owned, edited and operated by young men interested in the de-
velopment of the great rural-suburban region of Luzerne County and in
the attainment of the highest ideals of journalism. THE POST is truly
“more than a newspaper, it is a community institution.”
Congress shall make no law ¥ * abridging the freedom of speech, or
of Press.—From the first amendnient to the Constitution of the United
States.
Subscription, $2.00 Per Year Posabls in Advance),
Subscribers who send us changes of address are requested to include
both new and old addresses when they submit their notice of change.
his Wilkes-Barre address last Saturday night merit reflec- 3
THE DALLAS POST PROGRAM
THE DALLAS POST will lend its support and offers the use of its
columns to all projects which will help this community and the great
rural suburban territory which it serves to attain the Iollowing major
improvements: ;
1. Construction of more sidewalks for the protection Sb pedestrians in
Kingston township and Dallas. Bh RE
2. A free library located in’ the: Dallas region.
3. Better and adequate street lighting in Trucksville, Shavertown,
Fernbrook and Dallas.
4. Sanitary sewage disposal system for Dallas.
5. Closer co-operation between Dallas borough and surrounding
townships. /
6. Consolidated high schools and better co-operation between those
that now exist.
7. Adequate water supply for fire protection. 5
8. The formation of a Back Mountain Club made up of business men
and home owners interested in the development of a community con-
sciousness in Dallas, Trucksville,.Shavertown and" Fernbrook.
9. A modern concrete highway leading from Dallas’ and connecting
with the Sullivan Trail at Tunkhannock. :
When the responsilility for the inefficiency 1 is laid, ci-
(Editor's Note: To Lizette Woodworth Reese, whose poem, “Tears”,
has comforted untold hundreds, death came this week to blow away the
wisp of fog which “stood betwixt her and the sun’. Miss Reese would
have been 80 next month. She died in Baltimore, where she had always
lived. Here, in her memory, The Post reprints her poem, “Tears”, which
H. L. Mencken called “one of the greatest sonnets ever written.)
HEN I consider Life and its fews years—
A wisp of fog betwixt us and the syn;
A call to battle, and*the battle done
Ere the last echo dies within our ears:
‘A rose choked in the grass; an hour of fears;
The guests that past a darkening shore do beat,
The burst of music down an unlistening street—
I wonder at the idleness of tears.
Ye old, old dead, and ye: of yesternight,
* Chieftains, and bards, and keepers of the sheep,
By every cup of sorrow that you had,
Loose me trom tears, and make me see aright
How each hath back what once he stayed to weep;
Iiomer his sight, David his little lad!
LizeTTE WOODWORTH REESE
WEEKLY BOOST
SANTA CLAUS
who, having survived generations of doubt and suspicion, now comes
again to prove that, as always, he is big enough to forgive.
THEY'LL DISAPPEAR WHEN THE WATER RISES
Post's unique experimental campaign in behalf of peace, is reflected in
nation’s library shelves.
tional “Paths of Glory”. Since then that story has been made into a pla;
a not-very-successful one, to be sure—and has been translated into a number
of other languages. If you believed us then, believe us now when we say that
“Blood Relations”, a novel by Philip Gibbs, i is the equal of Cobb’s great work
It is to be expected, we suppose, that the greatest war stories should con
from abroad, from the countries which suffered most during the four and
half years of horror and terror. The first, “All Quiet On The Western Fro
came from a German. “Paths of Glory”, although written in this country, car
from a man who had served with the” Canadian army and was about th
French. Now Philip Gibbs, an Englishman, writes about the Evgih and the
French in the years from 1913 to 1934.
Gibbs’ book is considerably less gruesome than Remarque’s or Cobb's
The Englishman has told the story of Count Paul von Arnsberg, a Germ
Rhodes scholar who marries Aubrey Middleton, the very English sister of one
of his schoolmates at Oxford. Paul has been raised In a Bavarian Cc
(which Aubrey’s brother insists upon calling a “Slosh™) and his wife i
by his Seating courtesy. In him are the traditions of Wotan and
world.
“Blood Relations” is by no means a love story, but there is somethi
deeply inspiring in the survival of Paul’s and Aubrey’s love after their | P
go at each other’s throats. Mostly, the story deals with Aubrey’s life with
son, Franz Wilhelm, in the Schloss after Paul has gone as a Lieutenant
sakes his characters and deals in deft, bioad strokes with the =o w
are happening about him. We cannot remember having ever understood
temperaments of the peoples in the war, the slow advances and retreats, |
ade, the long wait for peace, the Wilsonian influence, and, finally, the Germ: sr
which turned toward Adolph Hitler as much as we did when we laid
Relations’ down.
It is a novel, with all the entertainment and thrill and readability of
novel; but, somehow, it also is a history. We recommend it sincerely.
# # # :
The theory that history is “lies agreed upon” is failing of fultillment in
the controversies evoked by the frequent charge of writers that industry
United States into the World War. One of he most recent of ‘these debat
has been taking place in The New York Times letter-column for two months
now.
Or the side of industry are Thomas W. Lamont of the firm of J. P. Mos
gan & Co., and Newton D. Baker, who, since he served in Wilsons Cabin
when war was declared, certainly should deserve to be heard. On the other
side are a host of less well-known persons. Their argument centers mostly about
a letter Ambassador Walter Hines Page sent to President Wilson on March 5,
1917, saying “It is not improbable that the only way of maintaining our pr
ent pre-eminent trade position and averting a panic is by declaring ‘war on
Germany.” The argument, it seems to us, is still to be settled satisfactorily and
you can follow it in The Times.
It must be admitted, in all fairness, it seems that, regardless of the truth
of the Hines message and its significance, Nicolson’s “Dwight Morrow”’, which
started the controversy when it charged that Mr. Morrow had a part in de
vilizing the world was a little harsh on the financiers, all of whom were not in.
favor of war and who, despite their power, could not have held the. Am I
people from getting into the war.
As The Times says: “It is an open question which kind of book is likel.
to prove more useful in the long run: the book warning ug against the \
men and propagandas that drag the United States into a World War, o
book pointing out how fixed is the American habit of getting involved
world wars.
-* * *
Of timely interest now (as this is written Mussolini still wants Et pia)
George Seldes’ new book “Sawdust Caesar”, a fitting successor to his recen
“Freedom of the Press”. oh
lomats warned the publishers there : be serious consequences from such
book. Now, four years after it was written, it has been published i in this
try, with a new foreword in which Seldes speaks hollowly of “Ameticay dic
tatorship.”
For many years Mussolini was a Socialist. When Italy approached] it
crisis he stood staunchly for neutrality. But within four days Mussolini,
he had not changed from Socialism, had come out flatly for war. His
rades turned from him, crying “Who paid?” Seldes has attempted to ans
that question. “Sawdust Caesar” is as involved and as fiery as most of Sele
books. It is worth reading.
Creation” Frederick Lewis Allen tells the story of the rise of Ameriian Sorters
try so it car be understood even by those of us who look upon anything
complicated than Market Closing Tables with bewilderment. ;
WELL,
1 SWAN
It takes 333 human hairs, place
side by side, to cover one inch.
Ted Loveland, who won the right
halfback position on The Post's all-
star football team, was fullback on
last year’s all-star team. Both years he
was chosen unanimously. :
America produces 43 per cent
the world’s coal. aE
; Broadway, New York, is 15% miles £
ong.
“Aa” is the name of ten rivers in
Europe.
In San Saba, Texas, High and Dry
Streets cross.
Jack rabbits do 35 miles an hour.
There are hundreds of square miles
of unexplored land in Utah. ho
The buffalo was polygamous. ne
Two million barrels of oil are taken
every hour from the earth in the
United States.
No proper names in the Bibl besin
with W. 4
Schubert wrote his song, “Ha c!
Hark! The Lark!” on the back ©
menu card.