Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 166, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 July 1918 — Universal Military Service Is the Great Preparedness Program [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Universal Military Service Is the Great Preparedness Program

By EDWARD W. PICKARD

of the Vigilante*

The great war, whatever may be its effect on the fate of dynasties and on national boundaries, is certain to be followed by a “leveling”, process wider than the world has ever known. Already'’ the movement is well under way in many of the countries of the old world, and its spread to the new world is inevitable. The insistent will of the great mass of the people it imposing itself on the governments' of the nations. Where it is not expressed by their legislative representatives it will be given voice more directly. The ancient fiction that there are no “classes” in America has long been discarded, but before many years we will have approached much nearer to that

ideal staie of equality. The nations that are best prepared for the coming change will suffer the least disturbance from it. The United States now has under consideration a plan potent to prepare it —universal military training. - ' ' .* In the working of this plan the young men of all stations of life will be brought together on terms of absolute equality. The sons of the farmer, the miner, the artisan, the professional man, the capitalist, the congressman, will drill together, hike together, dig trenches together, mess together, sleep together, and .no man will be better than his comrades. In thi« close association they are bound to thresh out their differences, to learn one another’s needs and views, and from this must come mutual respect for varying opinions. At the end of, their term of service these young men will return to civil life with a knowledge of their fellow citizens such as their ancestors never have had. . What the people of America want they can have. The* whole country, rather than congress or any one administration, was to blame for our lack of preparedness for the war. Universal military service is the great preparedness program for after-the-war conditions. The whole country will be to blame if it is not adopted.