Radio Script #92
Little Talks On Common Things
January 14, 1951
If you are not one of the ten million Americans who have already read the article entitled “How a Democracy Died” in Life magazine for January 1, I recommend that you read it at once — not just skim it, but read it thoroughly and carefully. I will venture the guess that too many of Life’s readers, as soon as they discovered that the article dealt with Greek states that went out of existence more than 2,000 years ago, never read the article at all. But I assure you it is not only worth reading; it should make every intelligent American sit up and take notice. For what happened to Athens in the fifth century before Christ can happen to the united States in the twentieth century.
“We know”, says the author of the Life article, “that history does not consist of a series of pat and perfect analogies.” Yet by merely telling the story of the annihilating war between Athens and Sparta, he reveals all too clearly that the conditions which underlay the destruction of the great Athenian state are the very conditions which confront America today.
It has now become a very trite saying that the only lesson taught by history is that it teaches no lesson. Men simply refuse to heed the warnings flashed by previous events. Yet it is never too late to keep trying, and Life has done a distinct, patriotic service in bringing to the attention of its huge reading public this obvious warning from history. What is that warning?
Just as today all the world seems at the mercy of two great powers, seeming with every passing day more and more likely to fight each other, so in the fifth century B. C. the Mediterranean World was at the mercy of Athens and Sparta, two states drawing nearer and nearer to war. Only a short time earlier the two Greek states had been allies to stop the Persian invasion, just as the two great contending powers today were once allied to stop the Nazi menace. sparta was a dictatorial, military state, afraid of the spread of democratic institutions, and determined to stop them by force. Athens was the world’s first democracy, interested more in the expansion of trade than in military might.
She had no imperial ambitions; she wanted only to live and let live. But the menace of militaristic Sparta grew greater and greater. The alliance that had defeated the Persians broke up, and Sparta began to draw about her a group of satellite and dependent states. To meet this threat Athens formed her friendly states into the Delian League — a sort of fore-runner of the Atlantic Pact. Now many of these Athenian friends did not want war even to ward off a Spartan attack. They wanted to conduct their own affairs in peace. But the expansion of Athenian interests had gone too far to retreat. The frontier was no longer the Grecian shore-line, but far distant islands in the vast Mediterranean. Her economic life and her democratic ideals had a stake in lands far away from home. Doesn’t that sound familiar?
The war which was to destroy Athens did not begin between her and Sparta. It too had its Korea. In the little distant colony of Spidamnus revolution broke out, one side supported by Corinth, a satellite of Sparta, the other side aided by Corcyra, an ally of Athens. The Athenian interests won, and were again victorious in a similar revolution at Potidaea. Sparta was now determined to take things out of the hands of its satellites and fight Athens to a finish.
Then Athens faced the problem that always faces a peaceful democracy of great power. First, not being militaristic, she had no great army like Sparta’s, but being a trading people, she did control the sea. Second, Athens had to pay the price of power, and that price is the distrust of lesser, friendly states. Again and again in history the smaller nations have stood in fear, sometimes turned to hatred, of the big nation that befriends them. So proud was Athens of its own justly renowned democratic institutions that it forgot that not all the different peoples of the world might equally respect and revere those institutions. Third, it sbnply could not conceive the possibility of defeat. Athenians had always won; they always would.
In light of that kind of situation, fear building upon fear, but paradoxically surmounted by unreasonable over-confidence, it should not surprise us that Athens, not Sparta, made the first outright attack. She decided to destroy the Spartan colony of Syracuse in Sicily, 400 miles away from Athens. The attempt met with ignominious defeat. But there was still the great Athenian navy. It could still lick the whole maritime world in the opinion of all good Athenians.
Then, one terrible day, in the Hellespont, not far from Istanbul in modern Turkey, the Spartans by superior stratagem wiped out the whole Athenian fleet. Blockaded now by land and sea, Athens was slowly reduced to starvation. She could do nothing but yield. The Athenian democracy was over; it was the beginning of the death of Greece.
Now, I beg you, read the whole article in Life magazine for yourself. And after you have read it, think about it.
Let us turn now to some thoughts not quite so sober and alaDming. Let us take a look at a few more of those items scattered through the 309 issues of the first volume of the Waterville Evening Mail in 1896. The first issue of the Mail, as a daily, appeared on January 29 of that year. Its first editorial said: “The waterville Evening Mail hereby puts out its hand in greeting to the public, in the hope that it may speedily become the public’s good friend, esteemed and valued for its sterling quality. The purpose is to give Waterville and the other prosperous towns of central Maine an evening paper interesting to its readers and servicable to the c01lDll\lni ties it represents.”
One of waterville’s leading merchants, David Gallert, lined himself up with the new paper in this movement of progress. His ad on page one said: “Progress in the front rank. The old Mail tells now the news eve:r:y day. And every day from now on the oldest Dry Goods House in Waterville, that of David Gallert, noted for its fair dealings, will tell Kennebec and Somerset customers something reliable.” If anyone thinks college students are destructive in their pranks today, he ought to read the Mail of half a century ago. On February 3, 1896 the Mail carried this i tam:
“Saturday night, when the juniors and freshmen returned from their banquet at Hager’s, they found the north end of South College — that, by the way, is the section in which I lived for three years as a student, but some years later than 1896 securely barricaded and a wily soph at every window with a pail of water. Some of the more daring members of the Class of ’99 procured a pickaxe and a crowbar, and with their pockets loaded with coal, proceeded to attempt an entrance. Finally amid showers of coal and broken glass the door was battered down and the freshmen, followed by nearly every one in college, poured into the hall.”
At that very time a prominent evangelist was holding meetings in Waterville. The very day after the South College riot, he held a most successful meeting at the college chapel, warning a large number of student converts. Whether any of the rioters were among them, the record saith not.
That particular evangelist, like most of his kind, was a bitter foe of dancing. Along with card playing, it was one of the Devil’ s chief inventions. The mail devoted a whole column to one of the evangelist’s attacks on dancing in one issue, took him to task as too extreme in the next issue, and in the third issue gave a detailed account of a very successful masked ball held at City Hall. It was attended not only by Waterville’s elite, but also by many guests from Augusta.
Some of the characters represented in fancy dress and masks were a Maine farmer, a Spanish prince, Richard III, Uncle Sam, a Chinese mandarin, an Indian chief, a gypsy, an Irish colleen, and the inevitable Topsy of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. That the evangelist’s extreme views about card playing were not shared by the waterville SChool Board or by the citizenry as a whole, whose overwhelming views any school board must alertly heed, is evidenced by the fact that a week after the evangelist left town a Waterville teaCher, Miss Sarah Lang, won first prize at a big whist party given by Mrs. Lewis Burleigh at Augusta.
Many of our older listeners remember Colby’s popular Negro janitor, Sam Osborne. It was in 1896 that Sam got his uniform. On January 29 the Mail announced: “Sam Osborne, the well known janitor of Colby University, will appear in a few days attired in a regular uniform. This move, while it is a source of pleasure to all interested in the college, is only in keeping with the example set by other institutions. Nearly all have their janitors in uniform. Sam’s will be made of blue cloth, adorned with buttons of the college gray. He has been measured for the suit and is anxiously awaiting the tailor’s finishing touChes.”
Two weeks later, on February 10, the Mail heralded the grand result. It said: “Janitor Sam Osborne of Colby University appeared this morning in his new uniform, and he never looked happier and more contented. The uniform is of dark blue cloth, trimmed with silver buttons. The coat is a straight front sack, similar in style to the Pullman car porter’s coat. The head-gear is square topped, low cap with straight visor, over which are the words ‘Janitor Colby Univ.’ in silver letters. Altogether it is a neat uniform and is admired by faculty and students as much as by Sam himself.”
On February 20, 1896 Redington and Company carried in the Mail a huge twopage ad, one page headed by a cut of the Redington block on Silver street, followed by these words: “We have been in business since 1869. The style and title of Redington and Company was adopted in 1882. The Silver Street block was built in 1893. It is classed by commercial travelers as the best store of its kind in the state, with one exception. We do not claim this, but others do for us. What we do claim is that we do as much for the public in a business way as any firm, and put an honest dollar in our own pocket at the same time.”
Some of the commodities mentioned in that big ad are indeed interesting. There were baby carriages with, so said the ad, “colors to please the eye and stop the children’s cry”. Bed springs were offered at a price range from 75 cents to $6.00. Chairs were from 25¢ to $50. Oak and cherry clothes poles (another name for hat racks) went for $1.17. Straw matting and Chinese goat rugs were in demand. Cradles of beautiful design were ready for the new population. Willow rockers were favorites in every home. But the Redington pride was its newly acquired carpet sewing machine, which permitted the firm proudly to proclaim: “Carpets sewed while you wait”.
There were other memorable ads back there in 1896. More than a year ago you heard me lament the passing of the good old Mocha and Java coffee for the modern exotic blends. So I like the ad of C. E. Mathews in the Mails of 1896: “Boston Java coffee mixed with Arabian Mocha makes the finest cup of coffee obtainable. This coffee is used at nearly every banquet and public supper in Waterville.” As for the Redington firm, it became justly disturbed at the claim made by some prospective customers that they could purchase goods so much more cheaply in Boston. Redingtons ran an especially effective ad on February 27: “Our prices are always as low as the lowest. We publish in this connection a letter from the largest carpet house in Boston. This letter was sent us in reply to an inquiry by one of our customers, who, on being told our price was $1.25 a yard for a certain grade of carpet, stated he could get the same thing for 87t cents in Boston. This is the letter:
“‘Messrs. Redington and Company, Waterville, Maine. Gentlemen: In regard to the Lowell Brussels, would say that, while at different times we have advertised these goods at 77¢, 87t¢ and other low prices, at retail, in every case they have been undesirable pat~erns and goods we have been glad-to get rid of at those prices. On the new patterns our price is $1.35. Yours truly, T. O. Callaghan and Company.’ “The above”, said the Redington ad, “speaks for itself. We can and do make prices as low as any firm in the U. S.”
A fitting close to our program tonight is to quote what the Mail had to say about a man who is now one of our most respected elder citizens and one whose personal friendship I have long cherished. This is what the Mail said on January 2, 1897: “Mr. Frank B. Hubbard, the new agent of the Maine Central R.R., has got mhis office harness well strapped on and it fits him so nicely that he appears like an old timer in the job. Mr. Hubbard is a man eminently fitted for the position to which he was recently promoted, as he began at the bottom round of the ladder in R.R. business, and has by his own energy and faithfulness made his way up to his present responsible position.”
It is good to know that Mr. Hubbard was appreciated by the Maine Central and its waterville citizens half a century ago, just as he was appreciated by Colby College a quarter of a century later and by all of his many friends in this year of 1951, 54 years after he became head of the Maine Central’s waterville office.
Year: 1951