Wake up, Aniei ica, bel’orc it’s too late! Rally round the (lag while we still have the chance! The threat to Old Glory has never been greater, even in the darkest days of the Republic’s history, and even though today the American (lag flies—albeit a bit shakily—all around the world. The threat conies not, as you might expect, from a foreign power; it comes from within, for slowly and almost imperceptibly the American (lag is changing color, right before our eyes. It’s still red, white, and blue, but it’s no longer the red, white, and blue that we used to know. The flag I originally pledged my allegiance to had stripes of a crisp but subdued red and a field of fine dark blue. A glance at the (lags displayed anywhere around the country—at parades, at schools, at shopping centers, over your alderman’s barbecue pit, along Fifth Avenue in New York, or wherever a number of flags Hy together—will show that these colors have been transformed into Disneyland or pop-art colors. The blue (which is supposed to stand for loyalty) is often what the garment clisiiict would tall electric: blue, and sometimes it leaves America altogether to become French blue or even, sad to say, royal blue. The red (for the blood shed by patriots) looks sometimes like a stop light, sometimes like a pizza, sometimes like artificially flavored cherry Jello. Hoth the red and the blue seem to be more suited to a drum majorette’s tmilorm than to a flag.

What has caused the alarming change in color? Are the flag makers taking undue liberties? Xo, it’s all just part of the march of progress, for nowadays about one in live American flags is made from synthetic fibers like nylon or acrylic, instead of cotton or wool bunting—which is what Retsy Ross used when (if the story is true) she sewed the first flag in 1776.

A flag made of nylon or acrylic—we might call it “Young Glory”—tan indeed be attractive. The material is glossy and slick and durable; it reHects light with great brilliance; and the manufacturers are very scientific, about it. It is possible to specify exact spectrographic wave lengths for the colors the United States flag is supposed to have. The Color Association of the United States, a quasi-official organi/ation based in New York, has simplified the problem, reducing the specifications to a colorimetric code and assigning a cable number to each color, thus facilitating orders from big textile firms.

The cable numbers of the colors of the United States Hag, under this system, 70180 (Old Glory Red). 70001 (white), and 70075 (Old Glory Klue). They add up 210.256, a very mystic number which will not be mentioned again. (Americans will be pleased to know that Old Glory Red also appears on the national flags of France and England and even Cuba. The Russian flag is a color called, ironically, US. Army Scarlet,