Editor’s Table: What Constitutes Loyal Citizenship

What Constitutes Loyal Citizenship?* By President Anthony W . Ivins

Our Slogan: We stand for Loyal Citizenship A little more than two weeks ago I received a telegram asking me to come immediately to Mexico. The matter of busi- ness which called me there was of very great importance to our people who had lived in Mexico and had been obliged to abandon their homes because of the revolutionary conditions which have existed there since 1912. I was obliged to leave and hurry to the point named as the meeting place of representatives of the Mexican government with me and one other party who had been appointed to negotiate the business in hand. It has been a very tiresome trip, both from a physical and mental point of view. I went as far as Hermosillo, the capital of the state of Sonora, on the west coast of Mexico, where, at this sea- son of the year, the weather is very oppressive. The drouth is extreme in that country no one remembers when there has been ;

a spring as dry and warm as it is now. The business was of a — nature that caused me constant anxiety hope to be able to accomplish it, and fear that I should not. And so, when I finally succeeded, and turned my face home- ward, I felt very thankful, and when I got on this side of the line, I was just about "all in," to use an ordinary, every-day phrase. I arrived home last evening. It has been our custom in years past to feature some special thing in our Mutual work; we have adopted what we call a slogan; and have been successful in the past, to a very great extent, at least, in the accomplishment of that which we have undertaken to do, so far as it applied to our state. Our present year's slogan, as announced by Brother Roberts: "We stand for Loyal Citizenship," certainly is of as great importance as any that we have ever had; for without good citizenship all of our hopes, our aspirations, and our endeavors, would be in vain. Loyal citizenship, as it applies to. the people who make up the republic of the United States of America, differs from that

""Delivered at the M. I. A. Conference, June 11, 1921.

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of any other people in the world. Of course, fundamentally, good citizenship is the same everywhere; but, after all, when you come to analyze the question, it is the proper regard for and application of the laws of the country in which one lives; and so, just in proportion as those laws are fundamentally cor- rect and necessary for the well being of society, it is more or less important that we be familiar with them, that we honor and uphold and sustain the law and those who frame and ad- minister it. I suppose that even if the laws of a country were in part bad, good citizenship would prompt one to be loyal to them. I have always felt in my heart that the only safety

— that society has is in proper observance of law that we honor it, not only by the declaration that we make, but by the lives

which we live. And there is no other country in which laws exist that are just like the laws which exist in the United States. The funda- mental law of no other nation was framed as was the funda- mental law of our country. At the time that this continent was discovered and began to be developed, the old world had already been divided into a great multitude of nations and peo- ples— usually peoples speaking one language, peoples with tra- ditions and prejudices and religion which differed from those of their neighbors. They were not friendly to one another, in many respects, although in a general way friendship was pro- fessed. And then there came a time when this new world was discovered,when people began to flock to it. Those people brought with them the prejudices, the errors, and the traditions of the old world. Fortunately for us, the traditions of no par- ticular people prevailed. When the time finally came, in the providence of the Lord, that this was to become an independent nation, there was brought together a combination of tempera- ments which had never before been brought together in the his- tory of the world. To the devoted faith of the Puritans of New England was added the sturdy patriotism and integrity of the Dutch at New York, the gallantry of the cavalier in Vir- ginia, and (afterward) the light-hearted energy of the French from New Orleans. These men, under the influence which must of necessity have prevailed in such a body, evolved our present system of Englishmen, not a govern- government— riot a government of ment of Dutchmen, and not a government of cavaliers, nor a gov- ernment of French, but a composite government embodying the astonishment ot the best ideals of these various peoples. To the whom the old world regarded as a mob, world, these people, the first time, at least in modern times, made the declaration for

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that men and women were endowed by God with certain inalien- able rights, rights which could not, in justice, be taken from them — that among those rights it was their privilege to enjoy life and pursue happiness, to transact business, to acquire wealth, in — their own way, after their own manner but with this one funda- mental doctrine, which we must never forget, that in doing so they must not infringe upon the rights of their fellows. They declared that it was the right of men to worship God accord- ing to the dictates of conscience, let them worship how, where, or what they might, or not worship at all. They declared this to be a country free to all men, and they invited the people of all nations —not of any particular nation, but the people of na- all tions —to come here and participate in blessings. This one its restriction only was placed upon them: the moment they set their feet upon American soil and complied with the require- ments of citizenship they were endowed with the same priv- ileges that every other man enjoyed, but they must leave be- hind them the traditions of the old world, they must forswear allegiance to all other governments, to all kingdoms, to any po- tentate, to any emperor. They must become one with these ele- ments to which I have referred, in the development of the new world. And when that declaration was once made, they then became citizens of this Republic, each with the same rights granted to every other man. It was under circumstances of this kind, my brothers and sisters, that the fundamental law of our government was framed, that the Constitution was given to us, that there was provided for us a Congress to which we might send our representatives, that laws may be there enacted for the government of the peo- ple. Provision was made for the execution of those laws, the administration of them, not by the same men that enacted them, because that would be dangerous; but the legislative powers of the government and the executive powers were so separated that fundamentally it made the framing and administration of our laws secure and safe to the people. So we have gone on now for all these years under this system. Now, what constitutes loyal citizenship to these principles? I have always considered it a very simple thing; it is not a thing upon which one needs to enlarge greatly. In the first place, good citizenship is very dependent upon good laws, and good laws are entirely dependent upon good citizenship. No matter how just the law may be, no matter how righteous may have been the men who enacted it, whenever a time comes that it becomes possible for any power to so corrupt the administra- tion of the law that it is not righteously administered among the people, the law has no effect. And so we depend upon the

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righteousness of the citizenship of the country to properly ad- minister even the best of laws. The country, into which I have just gone, south of us, had government established in it long before ours had; it had re- ligion there, long before we had religion in the United States. But, unfortunately for that country, there was no diversity of elements in the organization of its fundamental laws, the laws which have governed it from 1520 until now. You only need to become acquainted with it, as I have, to appreciate the dif- ference. The traditions, the errors, the enmities, the selfish- ness of the old world was brought to that country and planted there. No Englishmen were there, no Dutch, no French it — was purely Spanish; and, quite naturally (and I say it with- out any desire to criticize), Spain attempted to adapt the coun- try to its way of doing. I thought of it every moment that I was away. The moment I crossed that imaginary line which separates the two countries, there, in a country rich in natural resources as few countries in the world are rich; there where nature has done so much and man so little; there in those old cities which were old before we built cities in the United States, I found myself in a new world, a world which when it learns this lesson of loyal citizenship will rapidly develop. I pray that this development may come; I believe that it will. Never before, in my life — and I have experienced it many — times did I more thoroughly appreciate the fact that I was a citizen of this great republic of ours, than I did when I crossed the line again, just eight days ago today. Good citizenship teaches restraint; it teaches patience; it teaches the doctrine that if a man does wrong we shall take him before a cc art, and he shall be heard there, and witnesses shall appear a»ainst him, and that no judgment shall be ren- dered against him until a jury or judge has rendered a de- cision. That is a thing that we must always remember that — old, fundamental, English doctrine. Thank the Lord for it; he brought it into the world —inspired the English people to rise up in their strength and declare that men should not be punished without an impartial hearing by their peers; and that was brought over here and made a part of our law. Now, the relationship of the Church to good citizenship, I do not to my way of thinking, is fundamentally necessary. by that good citizenship, patriotic citizen- mean to imply that, because I be- ship, is not possible without religious conviction, man loyal and law-abiding, patriotic, lieve that it is— and if a is

part of the burdens of citizenship, as he en- ready to bear his regardless of his joys its blessings, he becomes a loyal citizen, religious convictions; but religion is that act by which man

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recognizes God and his allegiance and responsibility to, and dependence upon him; and once this faith is planted in the hearts of men and women, it then becomes easy for them to be law-abiding; they love law; they love order; they love pa- tience; they love mercy and charity and goodness, all of which find their way into the enactment and execution of laws by which people are governed. My idea of loyal citizenship is just to abide loyally by the laws of our state and country, to sustain loyally the men who enact those laws, and the men who execute them. You ask me the question, Does our citizenship require us to sustain and uphold men who are not righteous in the administration of the law; does it require us to acknowledge and sustain and up- hold laws which are not just? No, it does not; but it requires that those laws be changed or abrogated or amended if ex- perience proves that they are not good, wholesome laws; and the same with men who administer them. There may be times when men go wrong; there may be times when they sell the authority which they have for money there may be times when ;

they are not honest; there may be times when it becomes neces- sary to remove them; but that, too, must be done lawfully; it must be done patiently; it must be done in the order that is provided by the law of the country, and not arbitrarily. My idea of citizenship is, to be true to every principle of right, as our conscience prompts us to do the right. God has planted in the hearts of all men knowledge of good and evil, and I believe that no man or woman does wrong without know- ing it. That is what makes us responsible before God and be- fore the law for our acts. We know it. The savage that goes out to steal goes in the night. Why does he do it? Because he is afraid someone will see him. He knows that he is taking that which does not belong to him. The cannibal of the South Sea Islands, if you will study the stories of the old days of cannibal- ism, you will find, went off alone into some remote bay or ob- scure forest, there to feast upon the bodies of his victims. They knew that it was not a proper thing to do. Something in the savage heart told them that. That is the part of God that is in them and in all of us. Whenever we violate that, either as it applies to our loyalty to the Church or to the Government, we cease to be good citizens as we might and ought to be, and we cease to be devoted members of the Church to which we profess allegiance, as we might be. So that if you will just do the right thing, as your conscience prompts you, the thing that you do, and the thing that you say — if it brings happiness to you, if it brings peace, if it warms your soul and your spirit, you may be pretty well assured that

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you have not done the wrong thing; and if it brings regret, if it brings pain to your heart, if your spirit feels oppressed and heavy, it is a mighty good thing to go and undo that which you have done, and make amends for it, and remember that you do it no more. I believe, my brethren and sisters, if we will just govern ourselves by this simple rule, that we will make this slogan of ours of very great benefit to all of us, and when the end of the year shall come, and we better understand our duty and our obligation toward the government in which we live, to the laws which we ourselves have enacted through our representatives, greater peace, greater devotion, greater loyalty will come to all of us, to the Church, to the State. I pray for these things. I have tried to labor for them all my life. They are principles that have been burned into my soul from my youth. I have learned them as I have studied the history of nations, and I believe that no nation can stand without them. The world trembles today because of disregard for law, because of the lawlessness which exists, because the voice of the people has been smothered and the voice of the few has been made dominant. The Lord has told us in the Book of Mormon, told us in the Doctrine and Covenants, that the voice of the people is the voice of God; and if it is the voice of God, it always speaks for the truth and acts for the truth. And whenever the time comes that the majority of the — people turn away from that doctrine whenever, through self- ishness or ambition, they turn away from it and give their — voice to that which is evil woe betide them. It has resulted in the downfall of every nation of antiquity that has existed, and it just as surely applies to us as it applied to them. We cannot live, the government cannot exist, unless righteous laws be en- acted and there be righteous men to administer them. God bless you in your work, my brethren and sisters, in your associations. We pray for you; we help you in every way that we can. It is an important work. We must not tire in it: we must not conclude that it is a useless effort. It is not, and has not been. While its development may not appear to us to have been as great as we have desired; if there were brought together the accumulated blessings and benefits which have come to the Church and to the world through this organization, the Young Men's and Young Ladies' Mutual Improvement Asso- ciations of the Church, we would be astounded at the magnitude and importance of it. Amen. Our slogan: We stand for Loyal Citizenship.