The Potters Herald

THE CHERRY TREE
Where With Our Little Hatchet
We Tell the Truth About
Many Things, Sometimes Pro-
foundly, Sometimes Flippantly
and Sometimes Recklessly.

The last time the matter was under discussion someone referred to him as "the little man on the wedding cake" and then someone else said that he rehearsed his speeches running around under the dining room table

But of course that's not exactly the way to discuss national and even international political issues.

The trouble is, however, that it's very difficult to find the proper way, when there is so little said to the point. It is hard to disagree with what isn't known.

When a man doesn't say anything much about domestic issues, you have a hard time going much beyond saying that when a man so doubts his own ideas that he doesn't put them clearly into speech or writing, you haven't got much there.

And, of course (or so it has been said) foreign affairs aren't at issue. We are so beautifully united on foreign affairs! But don't we know better?

There are a couple of kinds of kickers these days—the hate boys playing at their senseless game of hating. Some of them hate because they have to fill out forms, when filling out forms is such a nuisance. Some of them hate because they don't like to deal with unions and there's scarcely any escape from that today.

And a lot of those who do the fanciest hating could look back to 1929, if they would, and remember that during that big famine period Cal Coolidge and Herbert Hoover had led them to a place where they didn't have one dime to rub against another.

But golly how they forget. How they do forget!

And now they are all intrigued by that little man on the wedding cake, whom they fondly hope—against all reasonable hope—will be elected to rid them of blanks to fill out, taxes to pay and unions to deal with.

Desert men now and then see something that they call a mirage—and admit it.

Turn now to something else. Not long ago Henry Wallace wrote an address for delivery upon the occasion of the dedication of a new agricultural college in Honduras.

There are a good many Americans who don't even know where to find Honduras on the map. But Henry Wallace knows where it is and he knows that it is important to the United States.

In his address the vice president said something of as much interest in our own south as in Honduras. He said that one of the objectives of the new school would be to develop new crops not previously grown in the American tropics, so that life could be richer, more secure and better balanced.

The vice president said such new crops would help in the industrialization of beautiful Honduras and would furnish the basis for increased purchasing power to buy imports from North America.

That Henry Wallace fellow has a lot of sense in his head.

Now North Americans are thinking about Latin America, too. But too many of them are thinking in the good old terms—how to get into Latin America to get its wealth out and into the hands of North America.

Take a look at some of the struggling going on for communications after the war. You don't hear so much about "what can we take to them" as you do about "what can we haul out of there."

The post-war world must be a two-way street if it is to be a street men will walk on through the years. Good will must be earned; it can't be bought.

But you don't hear much talk like that in certain campaign quarters.

You hear too darned much about cool planning and high strategy—about not making any mistakes in speeches and about the usual clap trap of professional politicians out to win an election, come what may.

What we want is talk about sanely building a good world, with our own nation the finest, soundest, fairest and squarest part of it. Get off that cake!

-CMW.