Jasper County Democrat, Volume 20, Number 54, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 October 1917 — AND WHAT OF FATHER? [ARTICLE]

AND WHAT OF FATHER?

There has been volumes' written about the brave mothers who are giving their sons to the war, and not one of us will raise a dissenting voice to what has been - said in mother’s behalf. None too much has been said or written and much more could be paid in praise of them. It is an impossibility to estimate the sacrifice that the mothers of this land or any other land have made in the service of their country. But how about the fathers? The boy’s babyhood and youth belongs to his mother. Son and father may be the best of pals during these years, but because father is away at his work all day long and day after day, and mother is at home, there cannot be the same intimacy. It is not until the boy has reached the verge of manhood, that period in his life when he feels like he wants to be a man and play the game with men that the father and son finds themselves drawn into a closer relationship than at any period in their lives. It is then that father discovers that the boy is a real little man and the son discovers that father is a bully good companion and friend who understands him as no mother, however loving, can hope to understand. /This is the period in their lives when the father and son plan together on the distant future, when they have long talks and look more deeply into each other’s hearts and souls than ever before. And it is just at this stage in their lives that war steps in and separates them. It is at this stage that the nations call the ' son to serve and the father to sacrifice. Mother has had the past and father

gives up the future. For if the bpv does not come back, father cannot have' -quite the store of memories of mother, and if he does come back, as most of them jwilj —he will have spent the time that would have . been father’s with other men and in other scenes, and though he may be bigger and stronger and a better man for it, he will, never be quite the same, boy to father that he was before. That invisible touch of intimacy that once existed seems to have fled through absence and associations with other • men. So without robbing the beauty and holiness of mother’s sacrifices, let us add these brief words for the brave, quiet, tearless sacrifice of the fathers of this land. —Exchange.