Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 218, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 September 1917 — Our Other Army [ARTICLE]

Our Other Army

By MELVILLE DAVISSON POST

of tho Vigilantes.

Every man is a soldier in this war. He holds hi* yard of front. H* stands somewhere in the line between Civilization and the rape of the* Prussian Horror. That line does not run from the sea to the Jura ooly-j It is a web over every foot of tha American republic. It runs through} every office, every workshop, every field, every factory. Wherever a man] is standing, today, on allied territory, he is standing in a trench. He is( a soldier with the obligations of a soldier. We have divided into two divisions; the division that is to assemble all our fighting energy and the division that is to assemble all our industrial energy. We have got a mistaken notion. There has been no selective draft The men have merely been divided. And let us not deceive ourselveiM This division has not placed on one class of our men any obligation patriotic duty that does not also equally remain on the other class. Service everywhere must be under the same ideals. We cannot havei two codes of honor. We cannot hold the fighting division of our armyt to the rigid standards of a noble patriotism and let the industrial onal go loose. If one man among us gives his life with no thought of shall not another give his goods? Shall the man who gives to the service! of his country the most valuable thing he has, give it under a harder condition than the man who gives a thing that is less valuable? Shall one man ask no profits for his life and another exact it for his coal and oil, his cotton and potatoes, his iron and ships? Who has drawn a linej of demarcation between these two men, that one shall act upon ideal* fine and noble and the other go free from them? us stand to and look the situation in the face. Are those of us past thirty years thereby exempted from the obligations of an elevated! public service? Does a flat foot exempt us; or a defective eye; or a. protruding abdomen?