Jasper County Democrat, Volume 20, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 April 1917 — ARE YOU IN THE GAME? [ARTICLE]

ARE YOU IN THE GAME?

President Wilson’s appeal to Americans to speak, act and serve together that the nation may meet the supreme test is that of a general to an army on the eve of a great and decisive conflict, thinks the Chicago Herald. Only it is vastly more significant than any of the historic appeals of generals or admirals just before the battle. It is addressed to the biggest army .the world has ever known—to a great civil army of 106,000,000 Americans. Time was when the military and naval arms won wars. Today there must be behind them a great civil army, well disciplined and maintaining the same ideals of sacrifice and service that animates the men who go to the front, or the cause is already lost. Once the civilian population could indulge itself, if it chose, in the thought that the war was in some sense a thing apart. Today ~ the duty of doing according to the measure of one’s abilities to aid the nation falls specifically and directly on every man and woman in the land. First and most significant in the great divisions that make up the civil army of America —the army r that must win the war for. America and the world and for freedom everywhere-—come the American farmers. The I‘residenj. appeals especially to them for discipline. cooperation, patriotic effort. They hold in their hands the issue of battles and the fate of nations. For them to shirk their duty is to desert a post .more important than. ( that ever -held by any great divi-, sion o£ a fighting army. They must I plant, plant, plant every available i acre with foodstuffs for Americans! and for their allies against Prus-j Sian militarism. This important; part of the army of all Americans; will surely heed the weighty appeal ■ of tjie nation’s head. AS- reads the President’s sig-, nific.-p/t/ address he visualizes the; other . grand divisions ’of the civil j army into which America .by the 1 very act of war resolves iitsgp ' The great manufacturing interests ' —employers and employes -pass ’in • review. . The miners —operatives! and operators—so important in this' matter of war. The great trins-

portation hosts of the count i y-—■ managers and workers—alike charged with th'e high responsibility .of seeing to it that there he no interruption of the "arteries of th© nation’s life.’’ The''hosts of ■commerce—merchants, middlem on. workmen, employes. And, most numerous and capable of vast effectiveness, the united * women of America. And to each soldier in this great civil army the President’s appeal carries-the new battle c'ry of freeis work for everyone of us in this fight 4of democracy against autocracy and the forces that keep nrejj. unfree. It summons every loyal American to. give freely of himself to the common cause and to remember that as wars are waged today the man or woman who is working in necessary industries at home is helping win the fight.