As I've said before, I'm reading the entire 20-volume set of the 1941 edition of Grolier's Book of Knowledge. I'm now halfway through the 9th volume, on page 3221, just finishing a section on the United States in which it tells about many of our resources and how America is first in this and that, as it was in 1941. At the conclusion, though, it says:
"As I read over this story I fear that it sounds boastful. Perhaps it is, for I have preferred to tell you of the things in which our country has been most successful. But there are other things in which we are not at the head of the world. In music, art and literature we are not in the first rank. In obedience to the law and respect for the rights of others, many nations surpass us. Our politics are not always clean. We can only hope that as the years go on we shall improve, and every one of us will do his part to make our country a better place in which to live.
"Someone has called America the 'melting-pot of the world.' By this he meant that in our country people of different races, different languages, different religions and different ideas of life are living here together, and out of all the confusion will some day come the future American. Just what he will be like no one can say. He is certain to be unlike the American of the earlier days."
With abortion "legally" entrenched and marriage threatened and our Constitution disintegrating, the last line haunts me with mixed feelings. I, for one, favor the American of the earlier days. Still, I appreciate what this is saying, and pray that, with God's help, if there is an American of the future, he will have become a moral and caring human being.
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