Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 238, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 October 1917 — Teas Marshall Rapa Those Who Oppose Tobacco Fund. [ARTICLE]

Teas Marshall Rapa Those Who Oppose Tobacco Fund.

Stirred to action by the criticism of the puritans who would deprive the soldier of his customary comfort of a smoke after a hard day’s training or fighting in the trenches, Tess Marshall, the rising young author whose stories are rated among the best of the day and are a familiar feature of the Saturday Evening Post, the American and numerous oth’er periodicals, has written the editor of the Medford, Ore., Tribune. The letter of the Rensselaer boy follows: To the Editor: Enclosed you will find a little contribution to the tobacco fund. I can’t imagine anyone in this age being intolerant and un-christian enough to want to deprive our soldiers, fighting the fight of tolerance and Christianity, of one of the things that makes life in- the trenches tolerable at all. . It is just about the limit. Some one changed water to wine once; they should remember, so as to make youth happy. And I doubt if the Bible was ever put to a use ! that better pleased the spirit of tolerance and magnanimity that is our inspiration in this war than when a gallant Frenchman tore out the leaves of a little copy to make fag papers for his comrades, th* nerves of whom were breaking down before a bombardment by the Germans. I don’t happen to work for a tobacco company. I call the weed the greatest gift of nature, and I believe it is-r-in war time, anyway. Moreover, it is very hard to find figures to prove that tobacco does any real harm to a full grown man. It used to be common to enscribe anything that gave comfort in the world to the devil; and a little of this medieval spirit seems to linger, even in this land that hates medievalism enough to go to war against it. Let them raise a smoke over there that will obscure as much as possible of the horror and discomfort of the trenches —there will be enough left, goodness knows! The press never did a better service than to turn its huge power toward securing the jcindly, benevolent, soul-satisfying weed for our soldiers in France. Yours sincerely, TESS MARSHALL. October 15, 1917.