Jasper County Democrat, Volume 20, Number 100, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 March 1918 — PHILOSOPHY OF WALT MASON [ARTICLE]

PHILOSOPHY OF WALT MASON

I took an ax and killed nine rats, and left them in their gore; and*- then I borrowed Johnson’s cats, and killed a dozen more. And thus I did more lasting good, the kind of good that pays, than 1 could do by shunning food on meatless, wheatless days. We gladly do without our steak, and our accustomed bread; we’re trusting that our* course will make the kaiser soak his head. But what’s the use, if we allow the rats to be alive? The grain they eat each day, 1 swow, would make an army thrive. So let us have a ratless day, a day on which we’ll rise, and chase the beastly rats and slay until the last one dies. Then we’ll conserve to beat the band, and feed the largest host, and every man in this broad land may have his loaf and roast. No meatless days or wheatless days we’ll need to win the war, if we get busy and erase the pest all men abhor. While men are tightening their belts, and knowing hunger’s pain, the nasty rats, doggone their pelts, are eating up our grain. And so I take down from its perch the sword of Bunker Hill, and through the house for rats I search, and kill, and kill, and kill.