Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 280, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 December 1917 — TO THE MOTHER [ARTICLE]

TO THE MOTHER

By Edgar Rica Burroughs.

One Saturday afternoon a boy in uniform came up to Chicago from Camp Grant, on leave. It may be that he was ysour boy—l do not He was a stranger in Chicago. He went to a movie show and then he walked the streets searching for something, for anything to relieve the gnawing ache of the homesickness in He could not enter a saloon and *to drink if he had so desired, for he was In uniform; but there were other; more alluring, deadlier forms of vice that were not denied him. They offered him human companionship and a substitute for*- love —however sordid and mercenary Tk. substitute it might be. ' He stood on a street corner and watched* thousands pass, and never in all his life before had he felt so alone and lonely. Then a woman accosted him. She was a handsome, well-dressed woman, and she awed the boy a little, so that he shuffled his feet, and stammered, and blushed, but he went with her. They boarded a car together and went to her home. The boy thought it quite the most beautiful place he had ever seen. The'woman called a young girl down from an upper floor. "This*is

my daughter,” she said, as she Introduced |he boy, "and I "want youto come in here meet my husband; Our only son is in France. There is nothing that we can do that we would not do for any boy who wears .that uniform. The French mothers have been good to my boy, so, if for no other reason, I could not do less than be good to the boys of my own country.” /. They kept him for dinner that night, and all night and all day Sunday until his train left for Rockford. He went to the movies with them, and to church, and for an automobile ride, and now he goes there whenever he is on leave. Suppose another sort of woman had accosted him? —and may be he was your boy. You can do the same for some other boy in uniform. You can open your home to him. You can save him for his country as surely as that other woman saved the boy in Chicago. And you can send him -on to France with a realization, based on your actions rather than upon words, that all America honors “the .sacred ploth” in which he marches forth to battle, and perhaps to die, for you and yours and for me and mine, f Association with these boys will elevate you ana your daughters as much as it will the boys, for while it keeps them from evil, it will inspire you with the high ideals which dominate the men of the National army. y