“WHAT IS DONE”

Wairarapa Times-Age, 26 June 1941, Page 6

“WHAT IS DONE”

LEAVING IT TO HISTORY. People who used to “let George do it" now advocate leaving it to history, notes the “Christian. Science Monitor.” History, they argue, will take care of Hitlerism, as it took care of Napoleon and other conquerors and tyrants. Over the perspective of centuries, the Alexanders do look like mere incidents in the great story of humanity. Thus the novelist, Kathleen Norris, preceding Colonel Lindbergh as speaker at the New York meeting of the America [First Committee, could say: “We are justified in feeling that, although a cruel and unbalanced dictator- has arisen in Europe, this state of affairs will last no longer than it has lasted in the past, when Peter the Great, (Louis XIV, Cromwell, Philip of Spain I and Napoleon have all caused them [panic. We may hope that within a few years, these despots will disapI pear." The conquerors come and go, ' seemingly falling by their own weight, as they rose apparently by their own power. But they did neither. Their times helped to make them what they were, and active opponents contributed decisively to the undoing of conquerors’ achievements. Americans who arc besieged in their moral citadels by arguments encouraging passivity and apathy may well remember the - history of their own nation's struggle for collective and individual freedom. History has brought these blessings to America. But what, is history? It is primarily the record of courageous action. History is not what men wait! for. It is what they do.