Unfeigned Champions of Freedom – Sunday, February 20, 1944
We pause again, as we do each recurring year at this season, between the birthdays of two American patriots whom time has given the mark of greatness—two men who have outlived all of the pettiness and prejudices, all of the misunderstandings and misrepresentations of their own generations—who have outlived all partisanship, to find permanent place in the minds and hearts of Americans and of freedom-loving peoples everywhere.
Time has burned out the underbrush and cleared away the smoke, to make the real issues of their day stand out sharply, and despite their differences of birth, circumstances, and personality, each of these men has lived in honored remembrance because each was an unfeigned champion of liberty.
It is a comparatively easy matter to look back now and to see why the names of Washington and Lincoln have become symbols of freedom, but to many who lived in their day the issues were just as confused as the issues of the present struggle are to many who live now. In their day there were contentions for the powers and privileges of leadership, for the loyalties of men, and for dominion over them, even as there are now. And—now again, as we find ourselves engaged in a struggle so intense, so complex, so involved, ofttimes our vision is diverted from the over-all issues by the immediate and necessary details of war.
Because our sons and our brothers are fighting across the face of the globe, our attention sometimes becomes focused more on principalities than on principles, more on the territories than on the truths at stake, and we are sometimes given to suppose that if we could only sweep clean certain sections of the earth’s surface, we could thereby sweep clean all the difficulties that face our generation—in other words, that our problems are wholly geographical—that our enemies are to be found only in well-defined areas or on well-marked fronts, and that everything outside these danger zones is safe for us—but the problem is yet more difficult than this—as far-seeing men have always known.
Territories must be won, and armies must be conquered. Than this there is no greater immediate task. But beyond this, it must ever be remembered that the enemies of freedom are not confined to any geographical area nor to any color or creed or class. Neither freedom nor truth is a matter of geography—nor of terminology. And this, Lincoln and Washington and the other champions of liberty from time immemorial have learned—that an enemy of freedom is an enemy of mankind no matter who he is or where he lives or under what banner he travels or by what name he calls his cause.
By Richard L. Evans, Spoken from the Tabernacle, Temple Square, Salt Lake City, Sunday, Feb. 20, 1944, over Radio Station KSL and the nationwide Columbia Broadcasting System. Copyright—1944.
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February 20, 1944
Broadcast Number 0,757