Getting Down To First Causes

Germany is finding that as a nation that has for four years

deliberately broken its pledges, that word is of no value,

that it is bankrupt in moral guarantees.

Map of Europe during WWI

The entente* is in the position with Germany of the hill man who

fought another man for telling an untruth about him. He had knocked

his enemy down and was still beating him though he was crying, 
"Enough!"  when a stranger came along and interfered.

"Stop! Stop!" he exclaimed. "Don't you hear him hollering enough?"

"Oh, yes!" replied the hill man, "but he is such a liar I don't know

whether he is telling the truth or not."

Common Yellow Jacket

When I was a girl at home, my father came in from the harvest field

one day at noon and with great glee told what had befallen my cousin, Charley.

Father and Uncle Henry were harvesting a field of wheat in the old-fashioned

way, cutting it by hand with cradles, and Charley, who was about ten years old,

followed them around the field for play.

He lagged behind until the men were ahead of him and then began to scream,

jumping up and down and throwing his arms around. Father and Uncle Henry

dropped their cradles and ran to him thinking a snake had bitten him or that

something in the woods close by was frightening him; but when they came

to Charley, he stopped screaming and laughed at them.

Charley fooled them this way three times, but they grew tired and warm

and had been deceived so many times that when, for the fourth time, he began

to scream, they looked back at him as he jumped up and down, then turned away

and went on with their work.

But Charley kept on screaming, and there seemed to be a new note in

his voice, so finally they walked back to where he was and found that he was 

in a yellow jackets nest; and the more he jumped and screamed, the more

came to sting him.  "Id like to have the training of that young man for

a little while," said father, "but I don't believe I could have thought of

a better way to punish him for his meanness."

Boys or men or nations, it seems to be the same, if they prove

themselves liars times enough, nobody will believe them

 when they do tell the truth.

"Let Him Scream"

Illustration from the book,

"Little House In The Big Woods"

Garth Williams

"Getting down to first causes, what makes one nation choose the

high way and another nation choose the low way? What produces character

and conscience in a nation anyhow? What produces the other thing?"

asks a writer in an article in the Saturday Evening Post.

And the question is left unanswered.

In a country ruled as Germany has been, there is no doubt the character

of the nation received the impress of rulers, coming from them down to

the people. In a country such as ours, the national character is also like that

of the rulers; but in this case the rulers are the people, and it is they who

impress themselves upon it.  The character of each individual one of us

affects our national character for good or bad.

Getting down to first causes, what forms the character of individuals?

Training!  School training; home training; mother training!

And there you are back to the first causes in the making of an honorable,

truthful, upright individual, the kind of citizen who collectively 

 makes an honorable, treaty-keeping nation, a nation,

  that chooses the high way instead of the low.

"Getting Down To First Causes"

(June 1919)

Laura Ingalls Wilder

(1867-1957)

Prolific American writer, patriotic,

and pioneer girl

From the book,

"Little House In The Ozarks"

A Laura Ingalls Wilder Sampler

The Rediscovered Writings

Edited by Stephen W. Hines

Guideposts Edition

(1991)

*A name used for Britain and France as allied against Germany after WWI.