OUR POINT OF VIEW.
After a year's planning and striving, in sunshine and gloom, amid discouragements and cheer, our magazine has at last been launched, and has received its baptism of criticism. The kindness with which it has been received has surpassed our expectations. We feel greatly encouraged over the fact that the public has stood in line, as it were, to welcome the advent of such an enterprise. This attitude inspires us to further effort to bring the public to a more thorough realization of its needs along this line, to show the vast resources of this wonderful region, and to bring out the fact that here is a land full of poetry, romance and the majesty of Nature — things that appeal not merely to the material side of life, but which uplift and ennoble men and make life brighter and more endurable. We did not expect half the encouragement that we have received. We had rather expected, and do yet expect, to fight our way up the hill to success and into the confidence and good will of our public. It is our desire to interest our readers in a vital way in the prosperity of The Pacific Monthly. For, as we conceive it, the publication of a magazine or a newspaper is not a private enterprise. It goes beyond that and becomes the people's own. The magazine especially is a representative of the literary life and activity of the section from which it comes, and is, of necessity, the expression of the best thought and sentiment of the community that gives it birth. The people, therefore, should be, and are, more vitally interested than individuals in an enterprise of this nature. The publishers are merely the instruments necessary to carry out the will of the people, to give them what they want, to be, in short, their representatives. This being true, it is not so much from commendation of the magazine as from criticism of its faults, and suggestions as to its improvement, that we will be enabled to attain our object. We have welcomed the suggestions that have come to us and have gratefully received any criticisms. We hope that in the future our readers will not hesitate to enlighten us as to any plans they may have in mind for the improvement of the magazine. The Pacific Monthly is in an embryonic state. It will be molded by its readers, and inasmuch as many have felt the need of a magazine here, each must also have had in mind some idea of what the character of such a publication should be. Perhaps it is well to remind our readers, what others have so often pointed out, that it is impossible to please everybody. We shall come much nearer reaching this goal, however, if the public will enter into the spirit of the occasion with us, and bear and forbear these first few months.
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Arrangements have been perfected for handling The Pacific Monthly in the East by the American News Company, of New York. The San Francisco News Company will take charge of this coast. These two concerns, with their numerous branches, will insure a careful and systematic distribution of the magazine throughout the country, and this will effectually bring our region to the notice of the most desirable classes. The magazine will, therefore, be unquestionably the best advertisement that our part of the country has ever received. This will become more and more true as time goes on, since the demand for the magazine is on the increase, owing to the desire in the East for accurate information concerning this coast. Our edition last month was not sufficient to supply the demand, and this month it promises to be larger still, so that we are forced to materially increase the number of copies printed. "A word to the wise is sufficient."
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Professor Norton, of Harvard, in his recent address on "The New American," takes a gloomy view of the situation not warranted by the facts. His attitude is rather that of an alarmist than that of a calm, judicial mind, carefully weighing both sides of the question. It is true that we must face new conditions, but it does not necessarily follow that in so doing we must become a "military nation." This is but a repetition of the old cry that was raised at the close of the civil war, when it was held by many that a large standing army would be required to control 4,000,000 freed slaves and to keep down rebellion. And even before this date, and with less apparent cause, the alarmists declared against our extension of territory on similar grounds, when it was a question of whether or not Oregon and all it represented should be held by the United States. Neither does it follow that "all brutal tendencies will be encouraged by the recognition of force as a last ap-
