Let Freedom Ring?

Besides Henry Wallace, who for Mexico's benefit added three more freedoms (see above) to Franklin Roosevelt's four freedoms (of speech and religion; from want and fear), others have taken to nominating new freedoms:

> Henry J. Kaiser asked yet another: "If mankind is to build and grow even greater, it must have freedom to employ to the full the creativeness of hand and mind which God has conferred upon it."

> The sober, wise Wall Street Journal editorialized for still another: "The freedom of every people to reject any or all of the other four, for themselves, if they so desire." Reason: "Democracy will become the political salvation of the race, if and as it is voluntarily embraced by non-democratic peoples and adapted to their respective conditions, but never if it is made a pretext for an attempt at enforced conformity."

> Manhattan's Waldorf-Astoria advertised: "While the United Nations are fightmg for the 'Four Freedoms' on a worldwide front, the Waldorf-Astoria offers you these Four Freedoms on the Home Front: Freedom from servant problems! Freedom from transit problems! Freedom from maintenance problems! Freedom from ownership problems!" (Croaked the liberal New Republic: ". . . an outrageous and inexcusable vulgarization and commercialization of President Roosevelt's famous phrase.")

Perhaps people were finding out that there are not numbered freedoms but only freedom. Patrick Henry did not ask for Nos. 1 to 4, nor for Nos. 3, 5, 7 and 9. He simply used the singular when he said (1775): "As for me, give me liberty or give me death." No one has yet managed to vulgarize that phrase.

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