Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 257, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 November 1918 — WAR HINTS, HELPS, DUTIES [ARTICLE]

WAR HINTS, HELPS, DUTIES

COMPLIED AND CONDENSED FOR THE STATE COUNCIL OF DEFENSE BY GEORGE ADE.

In getting these paragraphs ready week after week and sending them to the newspapers of Indiana, the writer has sometimes felt that he was nagging too much and getting to be a neighborhood scold. While acting as messenger for the State Council of Defense, he seemed te be repeating himslf a good deal and giving emphasis to small war tasks which did not always seem important. And yet, if we coulcj really check up op, Indiana’s proud record, we might learn that the state has made good in the war because the men, women and children of the state respected their small obligations and took them seriously and batted on a percentage basis of 1000 all of the time. •* • « War work consists largely of doing one’s duty over and over, dealing with items which once seemed trivial, cheered by no public approbation and inspired by no band music. The war work of the plain citizen at home is just to “carry on” without faltering. The war and its responsibiities must always keep house with his conscience. If he does something which he believes will help to win the war it is because the very thought of free people being forever enslaved by hard-faced brutes is unbearable to him. He performs a simple war duty because he feels that, even by some slight observance in the privacy of his own home, he is giving a little more impetus to the great- drive which is going to bring complete , victory. Carry on, and do the little things. The war is not being won by the kind of fellow who runs three times around the Court House Square, waving an American flag, and then goes lome and plays checkers for a week. The push which we have put into the war is irresistible because our people stay on the job. Millions, of units of volunteer energy have been consolidated right where they will do the most good. In these War Hints you have found repeated, time after time, suggestions about thrift stamps and cheerful letters to soldiers and.laying in coal and growing more truck in the garden and finding nurses for the Red Cross and saving the nut-shells and utilizing the garbage, etc., etc. You have 'been prodded with these petty reminders because the small helps become in the aggregate a giant strength before which even Germany is recoiling.

♦♦ ♦ ♦ Mr. A., of Anderson, Indiana, gets up in the morning and crawls into his darned and mended flannel's with a smile of grim cheerfulness. He is n'ot accustomed to wearing patches, but now they do not shame him. The wife had to send a lot of warm clothes to the Belgians and he has made a vow to buy so many thrift stamps each week and this is no time for expensive luxuries such as new underwear. Mr. A’s sacrificial performance is hidden from the public gaze by force of circumstances and his own modesty and, really, it isn’t much to blow about. But, when a million just like him begin sending clotheis to Belgium and making the old duds last a while longer and buying thrift stamps, the huddled refugees are kept alive and the triumphant armies move forward. Mr. B, of Brazil, .likes his coffee sweet. He starts to take the second helping of sugar and then he pauses and puts the forbidden portion back into the bowl. He never will get a medal for saving that little dash of sweetness. It wasn’t much of a saving but when>a hundred million people just like him have the quiet strength to practice self-denial, the submarines are cheated , and the 4 supply ships find their cargoes. Mr. C, of Crawfordsville, is at the breakfast table. He puts aside the pits from his morning portion of prunes and they are added to the family store which is going to the Red Cross. One year ago Mr. C would have felt foolish about saving seeds and nut shells, but he is helping to manufacture a gas-mask which will enable a Yank to come out of battle O. K. and grinning instead of writhing in agony. Mrs. D, of Decatur, is knitting a pair of socks when she might be playing bridge whist. One pair of socks isn’t many but when all of the formJer whist players begin to knit, *a great army goes into the winter accompanied by an unbreakable morale instead of cold feet. Miss E, of Evansville, writes encouraging letters to all the soldier boys she knows when she would be morC comfortable propped up on a pillow reading Robert W. Chambers. It is just a rainy-day “bit that she has contributed but the whole German Empire can’t hold back an army fed on the kind of letters she is writing - vvv Carry on with the duties that seem small when set off by themselves. The largest plans are made up of minor details wisely mobilized. The boy feeding a pig for market is a full partner with Pershing.