Why You Should Celebrate Thanksgiving Day, 1915

I found this article while searching the Internet Archive Book Images on Flickr. It's from The Utah Farmer, November 20, 1915.

"There are many reasons why the people of Utah should celebrate next Thursday, November 25 as Thanksgiving Day. We have this year great grounds for thankfulness by reason of our material prosperity. The fields have yielded their increase. Nowhere in all our land has there been an absolute failure of crops. True, there has been a shortage here and there, but generally the returns to the farmer have been exceptionally good. So far as material things are concerned, we have greater reason for thanksgiving than in any recent years.

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Perhaps the present war could not, under existing conditions, have been avoided, but let us pray that the final outcome of this terrible scatastrophy [sic] will open the eyes of all the peoples on earth to a full realization of the fact that war is wrong, and that a means be found by which disarmament will become world-wide and war between nations be forever stopped.

Let us be generous in lending a helping hand to the millions of our brothers and sisters across the Atlantic, who, through no fault of their own, are suffering for want of the bare necessities of life. There is perhaps no better and truer way of showing a thankful spirit than to aid those in need of help.

As we view this dreadful war from this distance, we are apt to conclude that the world's veneer of civilization is very thin indeed and that we are still but a step removed from barbarism. In reality, however, the situation is not so bad as that. None of the nations at war are today fighting because they love to kill and destroy, but rather because of lack of knowledge of how to avoid it. Some day nations will learn to settle their misunderstandings between themselves just as individuals of these same nations are compelled to adjust their difficulties without recourse to fighting."