Jasper County Democrat, Volume 21, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 July 1918 — WORK OR FIGHT. [ARTICLE]

WORK OR FIGHT.

The decree has gone forth—-“work or tight.” It is well—as far as it goes. But limited to subjects of the selective draft, it doesn’t begin to reach far enough. It should be made io reach all classes and conditions of American life; from the hbbO by the roadside to the millionaire in- his limousine. “No drones in America" should be the watch-cry till the great conflict is won. America expects every man to do his duty. Will public sentiment see that he does it? Giving is not enough, though one give .to his last kite. Moneys ehn- not wi n this wa r , but that which money can buy—the fruits of toil —can and will win. The millionaire gives hundreds of thousands to buy cannon-->,c: if nd cannon are rna.l?, the gift is i ,t abortive. It is labor that is needed now—intelligent, persistent, increasing labor, that shall go .to furnish and create those Vital sinews o: war without which, our great armies would be impotent. Bar the sluggard. Place hint under the ban of a supreme public con’.-mpt. It matters not his povertv or his millions, deman I tha* he WORK—and at sotne needful occupation. Laboh is king, and must hold the throne until it has made this world safe for all peaceful peoples.

The Army, like a college education, does not make a sage out of a fool, nor a gentleman out of a cad. Its function, like the college, is? not to create but to develop, to reveal the real composition of the .man submitting himself to its influence. Many thoughtless ones, seeing strutting uniforms, with seemingly but little within them, are tempted to decry the army as an institution, just as they or others have done the colleges, now and in times past. They, forget that these young men, but recently raised from ,an inconspicuous place in the common mass to a distinct place in the sun, the nation’s potential heroes, are as yet untried, and even when the fires of peril do burn out all but their essential characters, they will only be what they are, developed, accented, tempered maybe, yet possessing rhe same fundamental character with which they started. That so many men prove truly* heroic under test speaks well for this fundamental character of the race. But the point is, that we should laud the army* as a revealer of character, not praise or condemn it for the individual results of that revelation, for which the individual alone is responsible.

Are you saving NOW for the Fourth Liberty loan? Nothing would ‘please the kaiser more than to know- that you feel and act on the feeling that the war’s nearly over and the Government won’t need your few dollars. The war IS “nearly over’’—nearly , over 'HERE! and a few dollars willingly given now will do the work of hundreds and of thousands later on, w*he» brutal necessity may DEMAND! Have you eves stood on the street corner of a big city, w-here the street cars run swiftly and stop only long enough to pick up the. passengers at the very step? You may have seen some one running for a car, and because the car is not moving, he slackens his speed, just before he gets to it,, paying to himself, “I’m almost there. I can catch it all right.” But the car starts, picks up speed so rapidly that, though the self-fooled Wduld-be passenger sprints his best he loses his car. He had plenty 01 t'lre to c;tfh it, had he kc, t <n, but he “kidded himself” and lost out. Remember that and in this great war, don’t weaken, don’t let up for an instant, till it’s won, .THEN take your rest, knowing that you now have leisure to enjoy it.