Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 62, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 March 1918 — WRITE AND THEN WRITE AGAIN [ARTICLE]

WRITE AND THEN WRITE AGAIN

By George Ade It is “mail day” at a camp in France. The boys are crowding up to a hole in the-wall and reaching out for the precious letters as a miser •clutches for gold. They may have marched through London and they are within three hours of Paris, but what is a secondary metropolis compared with the old home x town? The Russian situation and the views of Lloyd George and the crop prospects in Italy measure very small alongside of news about father and mother and Aunt Lib and the local ball team and the girls who sit oh the front porches and knit. Can you put yourself in the place of the boy who has to back away with these words singing in his ears, “Sorry, kid, but there’s nothing for you?’* All the others squatted around, simply eating up the messages from back there, and he off by himself, blue as indigo, wondering what is the idea and why they have forgotten him.

If you know of a boy at the front, write to him. Don’t wait for a month after he goes away or it may be two months after he says “goodbye,” before he gets the first letter. Send the letter chasing after him as soon as he starts. Make them cheerful and don’t be afraid to put in all the local gossip and the fool cat-and-dog news of the neighborhood. Don’t tell him you are worried about him. Tell his he’s all right and that you’re proud of him. No need to urge him to avoid being killed or wounded. He feels the same as you do about getting shot up. Don’t compel his immediate relatives to do all the writing. Let him know that all of his friends are thinking of him and strong for him. Probably newspapers in wrappers will not go- through to the camps as promptly as letters, so clip out of newspapers all the items that you know will interest him, and add some editorial comments of your own, and send them first-class. Drop some kind of a message into the postoffice every few days so that, even allowing for delays and sidetracking, he will not have to wait through long stretches of loneliness, with no cheerful greeting from the people who are in his thoughts every day. When a lad is thousands of miles away from home for the first time, his sentimental regard for all of his kin and cronies becomes hugely magnified. He waits with an aching eagerness for the letters from home. Don’t throw him down. Let him find at least one happy letter in every mail.