Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 March 1918 — TO OUR BOYS IN SERVICE [ARTICLE]

TO OUR BOYS IN SERVICE

By HARRIOT GAYLORD

OF THE VIGILANTES

Many of you are in France already, others ply a strange new business on waters beneath which treacherous iron devils hunt human prey; the greater part are making ready to go somewhere “over there” to uphold the honor of our nation. Once it was your dream to cross smiling oceans to gay lands which stretched out beckoning hands; now the hands that beckon are bleeding and torn, and you are shipped off secretly, suddenly, carrying little except the clothes on your backs, the laughter on your faces, and the courage in your hearts. Winged and followed by our prayers, our “Good lucks!” our “God speeds!” our devotion, yes, our reverence, you set forth on this greatest of all crusades. Yes, a crusade. You were born and reared in a different era, an era of padding living and trivial interests; an eqj when comforts were good and luxuries better; when making one’s pile in order to get ahead of one’s neighbor was the goal toward which a large part of mankind was selfishly, unconcernedly striving. Heroism? Yes, you had read about it in books at school. Odysseus, Richard the Lion Hearted, Napoleon, had once given you dreams and thrills. But heroism was out of date in the sophisticated world in which you were setting down to live tame, sophisticated lives. Suddenly this world burst into flame. Across the seas the old'era became over night a forgotten age. Uncountable heroes are flashed into being and all In the day’s work blew their souls out for God, for homes, for country, in their effort to stem the avalanche of evil which sought to overwhelm the earth. The Crusaders of old were dreamers, fighting for high sentiment and an empty tomb. These later Crusaders were at throat grips with the Giant Evil, broken loose with his legions from hell organized, disciplined, concentrated, and hurled on the unsuspecting. unorganized, scattered, bewildered forces of Good, —forces never able to grip him in an iron embrace and stain

their eager daggers with his treacherous life blood. Could you by any chance keep clear of such a fight? We didn’t raise our American boys to be soldiers —or did we? Are unseen hands these days crowniijg our very commonplace brows with laurel wreaths and pinnipg on our breasts two huge M’s as our Dislnguished Service Order? Makers of Men! For this new nation of ours has had its ideals and its heroic examples to which we could point you, and men we have tried to teach you ’to be, sometimes spasmodically, sometimes with white flame earnestnessmen In outlook, men In practice, —and in this strange new world which has replaced the old, to be men at your age today means to offer life and hopes and dreams willingly, gladly, for this man’s job of cleaning away the slime the Hun has spread over the earth and making it once more safe for decent generations to come. If the war drags out a weary length, no boy with red blood in his veins will want to face his future unless he has girded himself up as you have done to the splendid, terrifying pitch of heroism demanded in this hour of the world’s agony. Many of ypu could not wait, but went out in the first white heat, telling the He which sealed you Canadians and thrilled the hearts of listening angels. When at last our American shackles were broken, the rest of you leaped Into the ranks of heroes at grips with Appollyon. You have passed beyond and above us! Your fathers and mothers, ydur teachers at school and college, used to scold and threaten and punish you; now you can hold them up with the bayonet nnd shoot them if they argue or disobey! We used to shake our heads sadly and fear some of you would come to evil ends; now you are all our heroes! We may not tell you how we feel. We greet you with a' glad “Howdy?” and speed you .with a gay “Good luck!” the while we try vigorously to choke down that lump of pride, regret, gratl-

tude, confound-the-Huns, apprehension, reverence, and still other things which will get into .pur throats and dim our eyes as we watch you march gallantly away on your crusade. W’here will it end, we sadly ask ourselves? You go out with your fine young bodies, your good brain stuff, your sensitive hearts, because that is the game for men and gentlemen to play. Will you come back with all that is splendid in you crystallized by this experience into vivid, honorable manhood, or are there little consecrated plots In France and Italy which you will make forever America? In the lap of the gods lies your scroll! It isn’t the goal th&t matters but how you run! That American boy whose man’s heart drove him to France at the first outbreak of war and who splendidly ran his race to its end beneath a white cross in the soil hallowed by "the blood of innumerable heroes, left behind words for you from the heart of his own experience. Listen to Alan Seeger! “Nothing but good can corfie to the soldier, so he plays his part well. Come out of the ordeal safe and sound, he has had an experience in the light of which all life thereafter will be three times richer and more beautiful; wounded, he will havg the esteem and admiration of all men and the approbation of his own conscience; killed, more than any other man he can face the unknown without misgiving,—that is so long as death comes upon him in a moment of courage and enthusiasm, not of faltering or of fear.” You will not falter, our fighting men from America! All that is best in us goes with you beyond the seas. Fight for us also a little, we beg you, when you fight for your homes, your country, and your God! Keep us in your hearts as we keep you in ours, and come back to us when the big job is finished, clear eyed, clean hearted heroes, ready to tackle that job of building up a new and better tomorrow above the ruins and chaos of today!