pay no attention to it, and about one 

 boy in a half dozen will pick it up and 

 put it on a hook. Now when you see 

 a hat on the floor I wish each of you 

 would try to be the boy that picks 

 it up. Think what you would like to 

 have another boy do to your hat if 

 it fell, and do the same to his hat." 



This teacher today would be sur- 

 prised to learn that a few words that 

 he said to his class of boys would 

 cause men forty years afterwards to 

 remove obstructions from the high- 

 way, but when they perform a trivial 

 service of this kind they pay tribute 

 to a good teacher who taught his 

 class something more than the daily 

 lepsons. 



/ " PEOPLE AND CITIZENS 



Saint Paul was a Roman citizen, 

 although he had never been in Rome 

 before making his memorable voy- 

 age. 



The Roman Empire was governed 

 from the City of Rome, and a citi- 

 zen of the empire had the rights of a 

 citizen of Rome. The loyalty of a 

 citizen was loyalty to the city rather 

 than to Italy or to the empire. 



This idea of citizenship became so 

 iirmly established in the Latin lan- 

 guage, and later in French and in 

 English, that after the French Revo- 

 lution every Frenchman was called 

 a citizen and an Englishman or an 

 American is called an English or an 

 American citizen. 



It is universally understood that 

 a citizen of the United States does not 

 necessarily live in a city, for a white 

 man born in Alaska may be a good 

 American citizen although he has 

 never seen a town of a thousand in- 

 habitants. 



To some fussy diplomats it seemed 

 that there might be confusion due to 

 the word "citizen" being used to 

 designate a person who might live 

 either in the country or in one of 

 the cities of a nation, and they adopt- 

 ed the plan of using the adjective 

 "national" to replace the familiar 

 noun "citizen." 



There seems to be no need for this 

 substitution, and no authority, unless 

 it is found in a dictionary published 

 day-before-yesterday, but writers of 

 newspaper editorials on the League 

 of Nations have greeted with joy this 

 adjective masquerading as a noun 

 and are working it overtime in dis- 

 cussing international questions. The 

 word appears seven times in one edi- 

 torial in the Saturday Evening Post 

 and in every case "citizen" or some 

 other noun could have been used to 

 better advantage than the word so 

 dear to the writer of the editorial. 



Why should we write of "the na- 

 tionals of Japan" when we can write 

 "the Japanese?" 



The letters on Roman standards 

 were S. P. Q. R., meaning "The Sen- 

 ate and the Roman People." If some 

 of our editors dislike to write of 

 citizens, why should they neglect the 

 people, for whose interests they are 

 the self appointed champions? Ask 

 any American if he is an American 

 national, and he will almost surely 

 be puzzled how to reply, but he has 

 no doubt about being an American 

 citizen. He was born an American 

 citizen, or became an American citizen 

 by naturalization, but he never be- 

 came an American national until the 

 title was conferred upon him with- 

 out his consent by newspaper editors. 



Think it over brother editor. Are 

 your fellow countrymen American 

 nationals or the American people? 

 and are you an American national 

 or an American citizen? 



