Change In Fourth Of July Celebrations

As one reads the returns of the Fourth of July celebrations held throughout the country, how little of the old-time Americanism appears in any of the programs. In many places no reference appears in any way to the great Declaration or to those principles of liberty which were formerly so prominent a part of all such occasions. Noise and riotous conduct in many of these celebrations replaced entirely these old-time ideals. As a matter of fact the principles of the Declaration of Independence have been so impaired and constitutional guarantees so twisted by the colonial system by which we have grafted upon our democracy that the old-time kind of celebration would not be in keeping with much of the tendency of the times.

Ex-Senator Chas. A. Towne, speaking in Tammany hall on the Fourth voiced something of the causes of this change. Among other things he said:

"This new policy of colonization is trying to masquerade in the borrowed garments of democracy. It has labeled itself 'expansion,' but the disguise is transparent. The new policy is not expansion. Expansion is the natural and healthful growth of an organism. The imperialistic process of enlargement is by the extraneous grafting of alien and unsympathetic tissue between which and the parent life there can never be any organic relation.

"The tendencies that, under the party in power, have led to a repudiation of the Declaration of Independence and to a partial imperlalization of the constitution of the United States, have naturally produced a corresponding revolution in the traditions and maxims of the government. The corruption discovered in our colonial administration, bad as it was, has been completely overshadowed by the recent revelations of systematized and confederated fraud in the postoffice department, which has astounded the country and arraigned the administration at the bar of public opinion. It is the natural result of long-continued irresponsible power.

"We are at the parting of the ways. The American people must choose and choose soon, whether to abandon the traditions of a century and a quarter of enter upon the road trodden to their doom by so many nations that have gone before us, or to make a re-dedication of this government to the sublime principles of its founders."