Article August 19, 1944 Issue

Duties and Rights

MARSHALL STIMSON

Recently writers, orators, and organizations have been stressing the importance of the Bill of Rights. That is proper, and should make us more appreciative of our great individual and national freedom. However, we must never forget that these rights have come down to us because men and women from the highest sense of duty have been willing to sacrifice material things, even life itself, that these precious rights should be our heritage. Neither should we forget that unless we as a nation so conduct ourselves as to deserve them we shall lose them.

It seems far more important to the writer to lay stress upon what might be termed a "Bill of Duties." Our young men are performing prodigious feats of valor on sea and land, and in the air. A large percentage of our population is devoting itself with unparalleled energy to the production of war material. Nevertheless, too many people are entirely unmindful of their obligations to the nation and to the men who are making the sacrifices on the fighting fronts. Too many are concerned with what they can get, rather than with what they can give.

There must be a co-ordinated effort to bring to the mind of all our people the fact that the price of liberty entails the duty of placing the welfare of the nation before any selfish interest, of upholding the sanctity of those institutions which make our nation great, the church and the home, and of practicing the virtues of thrift, honesty, and a spirit of fair play.

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