Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 283, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 December 1918 — LETTER NOT FROM THE FRONT [ARTICLE]

LETTER NOT FROM THE FRONT

BUT FROM THE THICK OF THE FIGHT RIGHT HERE AT HOME.. The following letter needs no explanation. It is fairly plain and evidently was not written with a mitten or glove on the right hand, lit is from the pen of C. P. Fate, of the capital of Lake county, and was received by Attorney Moses Leopold, of this city. . Crown Point, Ind., Dec. 2,1918. Mr. Mose Leopold, Rensselaer, Ind. Dear Mose:— “And Brutus says that Caesar was ambitious.” I think it was Mark Anthony. You know Mark' was city attorney or deputy prosecutor under J. Caesar, who said that. Mark made a fine little speech, that has gone down in 'history, but I don’t think he ever convinced anybody that Julius hadn’t been going through the honors of the day like a safe blower through a country post office, grabbing everything in sight. ■ Ever feed hogs, Mose? Believe me, a hog is some ambitious. When it comes to ambition it seems to me that our Mir. Woodrow has them all bdat. He’s got Caesar looking like a piker and a hog like a dyspeptic. Wilson’s all right. He’s good. He’s too good. He’s running this game. Sure he is. We don’t object to that. We expect 'him to. But that don’t let him count his white chips same as everybody else’s blue ones or let him open a pot on a pair of deuces. We sort of want the privilege of hornipg in when we stay and make fours or ■better. You know what I mean, Mose. We are beginning to feel that our worthy president thinks this war in Europe was staged just to feature him. That those three million soldiers we raised was only the chorus and that the four Liberty loans were the gate receipts. Lots of folks feel that Wilson thinks he is the bird who put the United States on the map. He’s going to wake up one of these days and find that a wop called Chris Colombo beat him. to the big discovery. And you can lay two to one that When he does he’ll claim that ■Columbus was a Republican and double-crossed him.

For a <bi»d who got in on a rain check, I’ll say that he sure has (the game sewed up. And when I say him,' I mean the whole gang. . According to theiir dope, Benedict AirnoJd was the grand organizer of the Republican party, same party being accused of everything 'bad that has ever ‘happened to this country, including the Galveston flood and the Chicago fire. Ask them and they will tell you that the kaiser and Ms understudy, the crown prince, are Republicans, who have ‘overplayed their hands. One sure thing, Mose, this adtninistrati'on is for peace. First, they say so, then they prove it by not sending Pershing anything to fight with. Say, if Baker had sent one-third as much ammunition to the bunch of honest-to-God, one hundred per cent American’s over there, as Wilson did messages, those Huns would have taken to the tall grass six months ago. At that the Democratic party, meaning Woodrow and his folks, didn’t freeze out the Republicans entirely. They let them have the soft job of furnishing the men and money, and any other little thing that required no brains. Where these lukewarm Americans, meaning Republicans, fell down and spoiled the [whole show was when they went to the polls and voted. Trouble with we fellows was that we have been singing that America was the home of the free so long we sort of got so we, poor boobs, believed it and voted just as we d pleased. At that, that election stuff did not seem to soak in on George Washington the second. He insists in going over and playing that ‘bunch of empire builders and busters all by his lonesome. Fine. Why, they are the rarest bunch of horse traders in the whole world. To make it good and strong, some of the heavy hitters in Europe come out with a statement—Who else would the United States send? Tough luck. Only one set of brains in a hundred and ten million bodies. Pretty soft for that bunch of sure thing traders. Say, Mose, When they get through with our little message writer, they will have charged us an entrance fee in this world’s war—and grabbed Goney Island as a coaling station. -'Why, we have given up everything but the declaration of independence, and we will lose that if the game isn’t called on account of darkness.

Mose, that kaiser was not such a wise guy. You can’t me. He failed to get that “Me undt Got” stuff copyrighted. If this stuff they are pulling off is good for this country, then palm leaf fans are a good buy in Alaska. You want to get me right, Mose. I’m not mad. That is, I’m not frothing at the mouth and biting myself. I’m just sort of discouraged. When a poor boob puts a mortgage on the old home place to buy Liberty Bonds, and his oldest boy is in the army, and he is accused of being a pro-German because he Votes the Republican ticket and likes saner kraut, he ain’t rated. He’s rack. Yours tiruly,

C. P. FATE.