National Affairs: Old Man's Warning

Cynicism was not smart last week in the U. S. Homespun old words like "democracy" and"liberty" had become respectable again -and the common property of plain citizens. Out of the mouths of non-political citizens the times ordained political truth.

At Lake Wawasee, Indiana, at the Indiana Federation of Clubs Convention, alert Paul Gray Hoffman, president of Studebaker Corp.. last week spoke his mind on patriotism, and spoke it well.

It was of a U. S. patriot that Paul Hoffman spoke -Old Cornelius Cole, whose life spanned a good part of U. S. history.

Born in 1822, died in 1924, Cornelius Cole helped make California an anti-slavery State, and went to the U. S. Senate after the Civil War. Eighteen years ago, on Senator Cole's looth birthday, Paul Hoff man had heard him speak. Said Hoffman: "He declared that human liberties were won in this country at a tremendous sacrifice of blood and fortune; that we must be ready to fight again, if necessary, to preserve them. 'Remember, gentlemen,' he said, 'as a small boy I sat on the knees of Revolutionary soldiers who had lost arms fighting for liberty. That liberty is very easily lost -unless we are vigilant.' We were a group of businessmen.

We listened to the Senator tolerantly be cause he was an old man and our honored guest. . . . Our minds were on the real-estate boom in Los Angeles. . . . "What did an old man's warning have to do with us?" Last week Businessman Hoffman heeded the old man's warning; so did his hearers.