Radio Script #91
Little Talks On Common Things
January 7, 1951
It was twelve years ago that I had the pleasure of introducing Maurice Hindus to a Waterville audience. He spoke from the platform of the Senior High School on one of Herbert Libby’s popular lecture series. Those were dark days for Hindus’ native Czechoslovakia. Hitler had just taken over the country, and the storm troopers held the people under the military heel of Nazi oppression.
Hindus said with great vehemence: “The Czech people will rise again. That tremendous urge for freedom cannot be kept down.” Hindus was sure the Czechs would win their independence again, as they had once won it under the elder Masaryk.
Six years ago in New York I heard the younger Masaryk tell the Herald-Tribune Forum why his government in CzeChoslovakia, freed by allied arms, was now turning in friendship toward Russia rather than toward the West. Though most of his listeners felt he was wrong, they knew he was honest and sincere.
I wonder what Hindus thinks today about Czechoslovakia I s new freedom. We know what Jan Masaryk thought about it, for two years ago, in disillusionment and discouragement, he committed suicide. His trusted Russians had grossly betrayed the trust.
What is happening today in Czechoslovakia, which American G.I.’s helped liberate from the Nazi oppressor in 1945, is a warning to every nation, even our own, whose people are determined to stay free. Allover Czechoslovakia today, from the capitol at Prague to the smallest village, appears the ominous sign “Narodni Podnik”, meaning national enterprise. Gone is the personal pride of the small shopkeeper, gone the family pride in ownership. For gone is private corporate enterprise, founded and nurtured over the years from the savings of honest, frugal Czechs.
Well do the Communists know that control over men’s lives begins with control of the means of livelihood. Economic freedom dies first; then, after it, all freedom dies. From economic control it is only one step to complete, one party political control, only one more step to thought control under the dread threat of the military police and the neighborhood spy. Beyond that is slavery.
Let us take warning from that sign allover Czechoslovakia. We must not have — not even under the pretense of united defense effort — Narodni Podnik in America. We must continue determinedly to insist that the best guarantee of the freedom, the dignity, the welfare and the security of every man, is the preservation of the American system of private enterprise. We must ever beware of increased largesse from the Handout state, and the subtle, insidious trend to believe that the government in Washington owes every citizen, regardless of his own efforts, complete care from cradle to grave.
Hitler was unable, through force of arms, to carry his kind of National Socialism to British soil. Yet Britain surrendered to the socialistic theory and practice of government without firing a single shot. Winston Churchill’s warning went unheeded, when he said: “The Scoialist program means that the reward of society must be equal for those who try and for those who shirk, for those·who succeed and for those· who fail.” If that sounds alluring and just what many Americans want, let’s remind ourselves of what G. B. Shaw, himself a socialist, said: “Continuous industrial serVice will one day be made compulsory. The right to work will become the obligation to work wherever the State puts us to work.”
That is what Britain is beginning to learn, what Czechoslovakia has learned to her bitter sorrow — that the communist design begins with the socialist incentive of welfare promises, continues with control of the economic life, and ends with coercion, with the destruction of every cherished freedom.
No, we must not, we shall not, have Narodni Podnik in America.
When we talked about William Bryant’s diary conunents on the Aroostook War in our broadcast a month ago, little did we realize that there was still living in Maine a man who was born in the very year that Bryant made that diary record, the year 1839.
Yes, I know it sounds impossible, for 1839 was III years ago. But a month ago there was still living in Houlton a man named Jeremiah Campbellton who was born in a wilderness cabin near what is now Van Buren on August 15, 1839. On December 23, two week.sago, Mr. Campbellton died at a nursing home in Houlton.
He was said to be the oldest man in New England.
When only seven years old Mr. Campbell ton had seen his parents massacred in a raid of the Micmac Indians from Canada. He was taken captive and lived with the Micmacs for six years. Although then only 13 years old, with the help of an Indian maiden he contrived his escape and made his way back to one of the white settlements in Aroostook.
Jeremiah Campbellton became a hunter and guide for the intrepid pioneers who settled Aroostook, a sort of Kit Carson of the northern border. He was said to know intimately every nook and cranny of the northeast woods. He long claimed that he turned the first Shovelful of earth for construction of the Bangor and Aroostook Railroad. He fought in both the Civil and SpaniSh-American Wars and in his last years humorously referred to himself as a former G. I. For 54 years Mr •. Campbellton had the companionship of his wife, the mother of his sixteen children. Yet so long was his life that he survived her by 28 years, during the last 25 of which he was totally blind.
A true child of the wilderness, Mr. Campbell ton never learned to read and wri te, but he spoke fluently four languages: English, French, Italian and Micmac.
Such was the man born in that long, long time ago in 1839, when William Bryant devoted a page of his diary to the start of the Aroostook War.
An amateur social historian like myself, who delves into the doings of Kennebec Valley people years ago, is grateful for a newspaper custom long since abandoned. We refer to the lengthy, detailed discussion of social events.
The waterville Mail changed from a weekly to a daily newspaper in January, 1896, just 54 years ago. I am sure many of you will be interested to know how the Mail of February 26, 1896 reported a reception held in Soper Hall on Main Street on the evening of February 25. It was conducted by the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity, which was then already half a century old at Colby. The guest of honor was President William R. Harper of the University of Chicago, who was later proved to be here, not for the principal purpose of honoring the Dekes, but to lure President Nathaniel Butler away from Colby to the University of Chicago, where he became the distinguished dean of the graduate school. President and Mrs. Butler were of course in the receiving line at Soper Hall, as were also other distinguished citizens and alumni of the fraternity.
The Mail devoted two first page columns to the event, and one of those columns is filled entirely with the names of lady guests and descriptions of their gowns. At the risk of omitting some name that ought to be mentioned, we cannot resist the temptation to give you a few of the well-remembered names listed in that social column of the Waterville Mail 54 years ago:
Sarah Lang- black satin, jet and lace
Annie Knight – light blue silk lace, pink roses
Alice purinton – light blue albatross, pearl trimming
Miss Dunn (was this Miss Florence or Miss Mabel?) – blue silk,
white lace trimming, carnations
Grace Lord – blue crepon
Mrs. F. C. Thayer – figured silk, white lace
Mary Abbott – old rose silk and chiffon
Ophelia Ball – black lace and jet
Mrs. A. F. Drummond – dark red silk and roses
Grace Illsley – white silk and lace
Mrs. Frank Redington – white moire and lace
Mrs. F. J. Arnold – Dresden silk, pearl garniture
Annie Dorr – pink chiffon
Mrs. A. J. Roberts – pink silk and white lace
Mrs. J. F. Hill – pink silk, lace garniture
Mrs. George K. Boutelle – Dresden silk and Chiffon; diamonds
That’s the way the proud old waterville Mail handled big social gatherings
half a century ago.
Back there in 1896 the bicycle had just come into its glory. The Waterville Association of Wheelmen had been formed. Their tour.s and their contests aroused much attention. The April 6 issue of the Mail carried no less than six separate ads for bicycles. A. F. Drummond at the Savings Bank was agent for the Victor; F. Blanchard sold several makes, including the Eagle and the Eclipse; S. A. Dickinson handled the Silver King; R. E. Lincoln sold the Dayton; Learned and Brown distributed the Columbia. C. H. Robinson and Co. of Boston advertised a bicycle called Robinson’S Crusoe for $65 — $10 down and $2 a week. It had barrel hubs and large tubing. A bicycle bell was thrown in free.
I find no mention of my own boyhood favorite, the Iver Johnson. Perhaps 1896 was a bit early for that make, because I owned my first Iver Johnson and my first bicycle in 1901.
In the spring of 1896 the Waterville Mail ran one of those well known popularity contests, for which a bicycle was the’ .prize. The contest ran for a month.
Subscriptions and single coupons from daily copies of the Mail counted specified numbers of points, and could be entered for any lady school teacher in Kennebec and Somerset Counties. Who was the most popular schoolmarm in the two counties?
To decide that question was the point of the Mail ‘s contest. The prize bike was properly decorated and displayed in the store window of J. F. Larrabee on Main Street.
Although teachers from Fairfield, Oakland and Skowhegan were entered, the contest soon settled down to a hard-fought race among four Waterville teachers: Sarah Lang,Clara Dolley, Emma Knauff and Elizabeth Manley. First one of the four would lead, then another. The result was in doubt until midnight of May 9, When a distinguished board of judges counted all the votes and declared the winner to be Miss Elizabeth Manley.
When I read the Mail’s account of the opening of the Olympic Games in Athens -it was in the Mail of April 6, 1896 — I was disappointed to see no mention of my friend Jim Connolly, still living at the age of 82 in Boston. In my little book “Jim Connolly and the Gloucester Fishermen” I told how Jim had been the winner of the first event in those revived Olympics. The Waterville Mail of April 6 said only: “The American contestants won in throwing the discus as well as in the hop, step and jump.”
On the next day, however, the April 7 issue of the Mail did better. It carried half a column describing the pageantry of the opening of the games in the presence of the King of Greece. In telling What happened in the early events, it said: “J. B. Connolly, an American, won the hop, step and jump, covering 13.71 meters.” Not a word of how Connolly had been refused leave of absence from Harvard to compete in the Olympics, how he had given up his Harvard career, joined the Olympic team at his own expense, and how finally he had become the first victor in the first Olympic contest in more than 2,500 years. The world was to learn that story much later. On April 7, 1896 the Waterville Mail missed it entirely.
But the Waterville Mail was a grand old paper just the same. We are sorry that it had finally to go the way of all flesh.
Year: 1951