Jasper County Democrat, Volume 21, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 May 1918 — “LET GEORGE DO IT" [ARTICLE]

“LET GEORGE DO IT"

It is a lamentable fact that thousands of otherwise good, loyal citizens of this country have -j never outgrown that boyish inclination to want “Geojrge” to do it. They have not realized that both themselves and “George” have grown to man's stature and assumed man’s obligations. \ In fact we as a people have been long accustomed to regard with complacency that familiar quotation, “That which is everybody’s business is nobody's business,” until the very thought has become a part of our natures. But we are now being rudely aroused to the unpleasant fact that “George” is busy—-too busy to assume the obligations that we fain would shirk. He has also a task that is calling for the best that is in him. In this emergency there

are but two courses left to us—either to bravely shoulder our load and march with the workers or shirk the responsibility and be relegated to the rear with the other slackers. And what a worfd of disgrace can be compressed into that word “slacker.’’ With what contempt we have always regarded the balky horse, rearing and plunging and fretting himself into a fever just to escape the task of drawing a load, the burden of whioh would have been far less tiresome than his silly, obstinate objections. Thus with some people who call themselves good Americans. -The load they are asked to assume would not prove at all oppressive if taken up cheerfully and carried patiently and bravely. / It isn’t only the German spy, the German sympathizer or even the pro-German American who is doing most to clog, the wheels of the great war machine. The heaviest drag to that machine is the man who whines for “George” to do the work that even his own craven conscience tells him 'he, himself, should do. He is not only not a help; but is a dead weight because he is leaving undone that which his government had every reason to expect he would do. Reader, If you are expecting “George” to do it, take another think. "George” is busy—desperately busy, and has neither the time nor the inclination to take up the burden you have so shamefully cast down and abandoned.