THE NOME NUGGET
Published Monday, Wednesday and Friday the
NOME PUBLISHING CO.
NOME, ALASKA
Telephone: Main 125 P. O. Box 6ia
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W. A. Boucher .Owner-Publisher
Emily Boucher ...Local Editor
, Entered as second class matter October 14, 1943, at the postoffice
at Nome, Alaska, under the Act of March 3. 1879.
Nome, Alaska. Monday, February 14, 1949
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Valentine’s Day Does Not Honor St. Valentine
Those lacy cards and red heart-shaped boxes of candy
sent on Vatentine’s Day have nothing to do with St. Val
entine, according to Britannica Junior, the encyclopae
dia for children.
Although there are seven St. Valentines listed in the
“Acts of the Saints” and February 14 is the saint’s day
for them all, no connection has been found between the
saints and holiday as it is celebrated today.
It is though, the Britannica Junior article explains,
that the customs of the holiday are instead, a continua
tion in modified form of an ancient Roman festival
called the “Lupercalia,” which occurred on February
15 and was something like a carnival.
In the 1700’s the customs of Valentine’s Day were in
dicative of serious romance. It was a general belief that
the first person of the opposite sex whom one met on
that dav would be one’s Valentine for the whole year
and perhaps for life.
“One young damsel wrote in 1754, ‘I lay abed and
shut my eyes all the morning till he came to our house,
for I would not have seen another man before him for
all the world’.”
Sometimes the young people held a lottery on St. Val
entine’s eve when the names of the girls were put into
a box and were drawn at random by the young men.
Then each pair would exchange gifts and each would be
the other’s “Valentine” for the year.
To help literary youths, who preferred to write and
decorate their own Valentines, the Britannica Juniorar
ticle continues, a book was published in 1797 called
“Cabinet of Love, or Cupid’s Repositorv of Choice Val
entine’s.” Here thee young man could find almost anv
verse he wanted in almost any degree of sentiment to
send to his Valentine.
FACTS ON THE COMMON COLD
(Alaska Territorial Health Dept.)
Only one person in four goes through the winter with
out a cold. Even in the summer month of July about one
person in every 20 is suffering from a cold.
The age group 20-29 has the lowest number of colds
•—the under 10 years of age, the highest.
Drops in temperature are followed by outbreaks of
colds.
People who spend the least money for food have the
most colds.
IColds are the largest single source of lost man hours
in industry.
In work days lost and medical treatment, colds are
est’mated to cost one and one-half billion dollars an
nually.
Office workers have more colds than factory workers
do. Women have more colds than men. v
Staying in bed as soon as first symptoms appear is
still the best known treatment for colds. Light, nourish
ing diet and plenty of liquid are also helpful.
EQUALITY OF GOOD *
(Christian Science Monitor)
There was one short sentence in the President’s inau
gural address that should not be allowed to slip by as a
platitude:
“We believe that all men are created equal be
cause they are created in the image of God.”
The faith of Tom Jefferrson and Tom Paine and the
others who held as a self-evident truth that all men are
j created equal has been put to severe tests since 1776.
The institution of slavery challenged it then; all the
inequalities of heredity and environment, of physical
FUNNY OR SERIOUS 1
and mental endowment, still challenge it now.
Men have given it what the philosophers call a “nor
mative” value, declaring that it describes an ideal rather
than a fact—an ideal which has been used in the fight
for greater equality of opportunity, for greater equality
before the law. As Theodore Parker said in the 19th cen
tury, human history stands against it but human nature
argues for it.
The President’s perspective statement adds some
thing more. An ideal to be effective must be rooted in
reality. We hold the ideal of social equality because we
recognize the fact of spiritual equality.
For the individual, saddled with all the blundering
inequalities of mortal selfhood, to find himself spiritual
ly as the image of God is to begin the conquest of mortal
limitations. For him to find beyond his neighbor’s hu-j
man frailties or virtues the ideal man of God’s creating \
is to rid himself of blinders and bring healing to society, j
Our social institutions, like our private ambitions, will
develop more quickly toward a just and compassionate
equality of good when our starting point is God and
not imperfect humanity.
- |
CLIMATE WILL NOT CURE TB, EVEN IN ARIZONA
The Arizona Tuberculosis and Health Assn, has a
message for Alaskans who believe that they must seek
the land of sunshine in order to combat tuberculosis.!
They urge us to encourage persons to cure in the place
where the disease was contracted, then go to Arizona to
enjoy the sunshine.
Because of the outmoded belief that sunshine cures!
TB, there has for many years been an influx of patients
; to that state. The TB association requests that we point
out the gross inadequacies in facilities for the care of
the tuberculous living in Arizona.
In cooperation with the Arizona State department of
public health, they list the following facts: (a) 766 per
sons died of TB in Arizona in 1947; (b) This death rate
is the highest in the nation; (c) There are an estimated
7000 persons in Arizona with active TB unknown toj
public health officials; (d) TB is the leading cause of i
death between the ages of 1 and 55 years; (e) 1 out of
every 9 TB deaths in Arizona occurred in children un- j
der 15 years; (f) one-third of all cases handled by Ari-J
zona Crippled Children’s Service are the result of TB.
Contrast these facts with the facilities—one state-fi-1
nanced sanatorium of 90 beds, one children’s TB hospi
tal with 26 beds, two county sanatoriums.
GREEK GUERRILLAS DO MUCH DAMAGE
A recent survey shows that Markos’ guerrillas have
inflicted more than a quarter billion dollars WQrth of
damage and devastation to Greek roads, railways, pub
lic utilties and buildings,, since the beginning of the
civil war.
According to the Greek government, the heaviest
losses were caused to buildings, roads, agriculture pro
ducts and equipment and livestock.
International News
At A Glance —
i*
•.Continued from Page One*
Yugoslavia must give up her hos
tile policy if she wants to be ac
cepted in the communist fold.'
The latest icy blast in the Yugo
slav-Russian cold war came in a
note from the Russian govern
ment, delivered ot Premier Mar
shay Tita’s government in Bel
grade.
Yugoslavia had complained be
cause sh ewas left out of the Rus
sian-sponsored economic council
of mutual aid <ECMA>.
While the communist countries
were having their economic and
political difficulties, reports from
Munich said thousands of refugees
fleeing from the iron curtain coun
tries were pouring into Bavaria,
tiny south German agricultural
state. The number of refugees,
since the war was swollen to 2,
250,000. These include people run
ning away from Soviet-occupied
Germany, Soviet satellite coun
tries and from Czechoslovakia's
Sudetenland. Earlier reports from
Vienna said many were fleeing
Hungary, since the Mindszenty
case.
Norweigian foreign mini s t e r
Halvard Lange is on his way back
to Norway to report on his talks
with U. S. secretary of state Dean
Acheson, who gave him the offi
cial American view of the best
way to defend Scandinavia from
possible attack.
The cominform, which sets the
policy line for international com
munism was reported by a Polish
source to»be meeting somewhere
in Czechoslovakia. The meet'ng
might have some bearing on the
cominform’s rift with Yugoslavia.
Monday, February 14, 1949
Pope Pius XII. in a somber ad
dress before the College of Car
dinals, voiced his “bitter grief” to
day over the trial and condemna
tion of Josef Cardinal Mindszenty.
The Pontiff’s speech, phrased in
sorrow rather than anger, was
made before a secret and extraor
dinary consistory of the sacrea
college on the case of the Hungar
ian prima'e, now under life sen
tence.
The Holy Father, claid in his
consistorial robes of white wool,
told the 16 assembled princes of
the church that when a civil gov
ernment contradicts divine and
humane rights “bishops and the
faithful themselves are bound by
their conscience to resist unjust
laws.”
The imprisonment of Cardinal
Mindszenty, he said, was “a most
serious outrage which inflicts a
deep wound, only only on your
distinguished college and on the
church, but also on every uphold
er of the dignity and liberty of
man.”
The Pontiff declared the pri
mate’s trial had not been fairly re
ported and added:
“The principal object of the
trial was to disrupt the Catholic
church in Hungary.”
The Pope declared Mindszenty’s
physical condition during the trial
was “inexplicable except as the
result of secret influences which
may not be publicly revealed; to
prove this there is the fact that a
man endowed with the full vigor
of a forceful nature suddenly ap
pears weak and mentally unbal
anced.”
Meantime, in Havana, Francis
Cardinal Spellman of New York,
attacked “malicious, cruel, anti
Christian tyrants” for vicious per
secution of Christians.”
Eastern European assaults on