Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 190, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 August 1917 — NOT AWAKE TO THE CRISIS [ARTICLE]

NOT AWAKE TO THE CRISIS

Patriots, Who. Incidentally Are Running for Legislature, Are Very Badly Discouraged. “dur citizens don’t act as if they fully realized the crisis confronting them. Some of the time they actually seem to be asleep to the fact that we are at war,” grumbled the landlord of the Petunia tavern to the Kansas City Star. “Of course quite a number of the lads have enlisted, and registration went off without a bobble. The good old mothers in Israel are knitting ; socks and wristlets like mad. The girls are getting ready to be nurses and giggling a good deal about it. Two grim young doctors will go to help kill Germans, and a pin-feathery dentist who has volunteered is clacking his instruments mighty ominouslyi- We didn’t have to be dinged at any more than other communities to get us to buy Liberty bonds and contribute to the Red Cross. And Theodore Pappakryiacocopulous, the Greek, who has only taken out his first papers, got in a hurry and set a Red Cross day of his own, and gave the entire receipts of his candy store for that day to the cause. “But when one of the town busybodies calls a grass mass meeting and demands that we come and expose our patriotism to the world, comparatively few of us attend. Those who do listen calmly to the band, and then when Hon. Bray Louder, Hon. Howland Rave and other blatherskites arise and shout about the gur-rand old ful-lag and Incidentally consent to run for the legislature if earnestly Solicited by their many friends, we either go to sleep on them or gaze fishy-eyed for a while and then mizzle off home. I understand that the Huns are pretty badly discouraged about us.”