The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn If Jefferson Could Meet the Press THOMAS JEFFERSON did not depend upon miracles. When he pictured a lot of farmers, businessmen and workers ruling a country by...
...Of course, "The Hotel" is the Hotel du-Pont...
...My post office address is Wilmington, a town that has a good many rather special charms...
...They have traveled widely and know what it is all about...
...They are intelligent and unprejudiced...
...These men have covered the country...
...If they are right, their statement is about as disturbing as anything could be...
...And now the AAUN is sailing along in fine style...
...When he pictured a lot of farmers, businessmen and workers ruling a country by their votes, he did not expect them to be inspired by Divine Providence...
...They proved to be wrong, of course...
...I mentioned Thomas Jefferson...
...What disturbed me was that these two experienced and well-informed men quietly joined in their answer: "Our newspapers have...
...with few exceptions, completely failed to give the people the information about international affairs and the United Nations which they need for intelligent thought and action...
...Our faith in public criticism seems to be justified...
...The schools are right now being hauled ruthlessly over the coals...
...By answering each other's questions or reminding each other of this or that point which might be overlooked, they give their audiences a lively and informative time...
...a Democrat from Missouri, and Chester E. Merrow, a Republican from New Hampshire...
...And dinner, of course, in a cozy town of this sort, had to be eaten in the Green Room of "The Hotel...
...I live, as most of my friends have discovered, in an outlying paradise along the northern border of Delaware...
...I think they have deserved it, but I also think they are improving rather rapidly...
...His idea was that they would receive adequate information and the good sense to use it from two very human sources, the public schools and the free press...
...These men were A. S. J. Carnahan...
...I put the question which had been on my mind all afternoon: "Why is it that so many Americans are so ignorant and feel so snooty about the United Nations...
...Everything is there: the theater, the ballroom, the stock exchange, the best meeting-halls and restaurants...
...When it started operations in Wilmington a few years ago, there were many who prophesied failure...
...just over the edge of one of the most alluring regions of Pennsylvania...
...This set of agitators reaches clear across the country, and its chief purpose is to help keep people awake...
...In a half-Southern town, one that is conservative to the bone," they mourned, "you never can work up any enthusiasm for a thing as far off and futuristic as the United Nations...
...As soon as we were decently seated...
...I. should mention New Castle County...
...A New Yorker cannot possibly understand how completely at home a Wilmingtonian feels in a room where the waitresses are old friends and the pictures of the walls look down like old family portraits...
...And this old-fashioned political unit gives us every sort of service we need...
...Most of us realize by now that we live by counties rather than by towns, and our county bears the quaint old name of New Castle...
...In addition to all the other advantages of this sort, we have an extra-lively outfit of the American Association for the United Nations...
...We have heard loud wails about the inadequate teaching of science and hardly anything at all about the yawning gap where instruction on international affairs should be...
...They have just been rehabilitating the courthouse which was built in 1718 or thereabouts...
...Both of these legislators have occupied positions well up in the UN hierarchy...
...Give us a couple of years, and we will show you an educational system on which the country can depend...
...But that is another story...
...And this brings me, at last, to my point...
...When it was all over, the last cocktail had been drunk and the last question answered, we thought, inevitably, of dinner...
...But the public criticism of our educational system has been somewhat one-sided...
...We are perfectly happy outside the troublesome town...
...Well, we invited our friends to come and have a drink and get acquainted with two Congressmen...
...Gloomy guesses like these are always wrong in America...
...But in both these areas, I am told, progress is being made...
...They are now giving two weeks of their time going from town to town and putting on a show about UN operations...
...The other evening I received some expert testimony about their performance which, I confess, gave me a shock...
...But what about our newspapers...
...In addition we have, either in town or roundabout, all that one can ask in the way of concerts, lectures, meetings, movies, etc...
...You can sit in the lobby on a fine afternoon and watch the whole town parade by...
...Last Wednesday, the Wilmington unit of this group invited a select list of its men friends to attend a cocktail party at "The Hotel...
...Yes," these men said, "Jefferson had in mind papers quite different from those which most of our people are forced to read...
...And despite the fact that we enjoy all the conveniences of modern life, we have as our neighbors the crows, the rabbits and the squirrels...
Vol. 42 • April 1959 • No. 16
