Our Politics Must Be Purified, Thaddeus Cheatham, Nov. 16, 1918

From the editorial page of The Pinehurst Outlook, Nov. 16, 1918. Published every Saturday morning during the season, November-May. Conducted by Ralph W. Page. There is a Thaddeus A. Cheatham who was a minister in the Village Chapel of Pinehurst, who wrote a book called I Believe in Life that was published in 1941, but I’m not sure if this is the same man who wrote the following.

Reconstruction by Thaddeus A. Cheatham

With honest joy and heartfelt thanksgiving the world hails the coming of peace. The boastings of Autocracy are hushed, the “shining sword” is sheathed and “Der Tag” has arrived. The lurid glare of the long drawn battle line reveals the silhouetted forms of the brave men of many lands who threw themselves in the way of the advancing hordes of militarism. At times the issue seemed doubtful, but we had faith in these men, we followed them with our hopes and prayers, and the mighty armies of the enemy did not “pass.”

Our hearts beat today with a justifiable pride that “our boys” were privileged to turn the tide of battle. The flag has become a more sacred emblem and our patriotism takes on renewed consecration because America was not found wanting when the supreme call came.

Among other things, the war has brought to us a double revelation. It has made us appreciate how inestimably precious are the spiritual verities of our civilization, and it has revealed the willingness of men to accept self-sacrifice, “the peculiar exalted joy that comes of flinging all one is and has into the common stock when some tremendous demand is made upon our uttermost in an hour of crisis.”

And now, as the battle clouds melt away before the before the kindly sunshine of peace, we find tasks awaiting us that will tax our resources almost beyond imagination. We have resolved that the world of the future must be enough better to justify the awful price that has been paid. We are to make sure that these heroic dead shall not have died in vain. They died to make the world safe for democracy, and now we are to live to make this democracy a reality.

The testing days that are upon us must shame the slacker and the quitter. There must be no place in our democracy for the profiteer, the junker, and the self-seeking partisan. Our politics must be purified. We are not to think primarily in terms of party allegiance or sectionalism. Our citizens are not to be Northerners or Southerners, Easterners or Westerners. Nor are they to white, black, or red, but simply Americans. The social order must give to every man a fair opportunity. Religion should take its natural and legitimate place so that it may fortify and safeguard the nation’s soul. We used to sing of our “sweet land of Liberty,” and “from every mountain side” we wanted to “let freedom ring,” but it was sort of shallow freedom, that was materialistic and epicurean. Now, thank God, we have clothed freedom with its holy significance, as we have showed the world that we could give our best without reservation, that we could, in the midst of plenty, deny ourselves bread and meat and sugar in order to send these things “over there” where war has cast its merciless shadow. Our patriotism has become intensified, it is an obsession, a holy thing, and in this large altruistic spirit we will give ourselves to the work of reconstructing a torn and bleeding world.

--Thaddeus A. Cheatham