The richer side of life

Chapter 22 of Commitment to Freedom is entitled The Monitor's Own Peace Plan. On its first page I find a familiar place-name, the Ruhr district of Germany, and am given a geography and a history lesson about my son-in-law's place of growing up.

The story is that in 1923 the Monitor printed an interview with Adolph Hitler in which he said: “If I had been at the head of the Government, the Ruhr district [which France had just reoccupied] would have been burned down as Moscow was burned by the Russians. France would never have found a single tree or a bridge there. Since the Ruhr district no longer belongs to us today, it should vanish from the face of the earth” (p. 228). The Ruhr was a valuable coal mining area; also an agricultural and industrial centre. It seems it wasn't till 1936 that Hitler took back this valuable area for Germany.

There is quite some history to be gleaned in this story.

On the second page of the chapter we are told that Winston Churchill had a signed article printed in the same 1923 issue of The Christian Science Monitor. Canham records that “He was recently out of office, with the fall of the Lloyd George government, and he was filling in the odd hours with journalism. His article was a witty and severe attack on H.G. Wells's socialist plans for the merging of the British Empire into a world federation” (p. 229).

In those 1923 days there was much talk about the fortunes made by some through war, and “Peace Plans” were being championed. The Monitor came up with its own plan which proposed a constitutional amendment which would "take the profits out of war. The proposed amendment was that:”In the event of a declaration of war, the property, equally with the persons, lives, and liberties of all citizens shall be subject to conscription for the defense of the Nation, and it shall be the duty of the President to propose and of Congress to enact the legislation necessary to give effect to this amendment” (p. 230).

Our book says that this plan “...helped greatly to bring the Monitor to the attention of the nation and the world” (p. 233). Many influential people were in favour, while, of course, many others opposed the plan.

I have just finished the chapter which talks about The Richer Side of Life. The beloved Home Forum and Family Features are recounted with love. As they were accepted by the readers. The chapter (#32) speaks of the cultural benefits a reader could gain from these pages. For instance, the opening paragraph recalls that “A woman on a remote mountain ranch in western Canada once wrote the Monitor, and in simple but touching terms told how its pages had brought to her the rich flow of the world's cultural life and heritage. It had obliterated her isolation and made her one of the company of cultivated persons the world over, and timelessly” (p. 351).

Canham, I think, modestly, finishes the chapter by mentioning two features which (I think) were his own “things” - “Mail Bag” and “Youth Round Table” (p. 362). This is where I found my American pen-pals through Canham's wish to encourage international friendships.

Joyce Voysey