Jasper County Democrat, Volume 22, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 April 1919 — A FEW LITTLE FLAGS. [ARTICLE]

A FEW LITTLE FLAGS.

In the capitols of most of the states of the Union are flags that men reverence and love, and when the boys come home from overseas they will bring other flags that we shall reverence, too, for what they have been through, and what they stand for. They will have the regular number of stripes and the prescribed number of stars, and will differ from other American flags that we see every day only in the glamour - that service at the front has thrown r und them; but even those are not the flags that we should most like to see. Midway of last year the word began to steal through northern France and Belgium that American soldiers were fighting their way into the German-held country. Now and then the women saw an American iprisioner or an American soldier who had been wounded; and frequently they heard the Germans speak of the “American swine.” Hidden away in secret places those women had French or Belgian flags, and now they began to make American flags against the day that they knew was coming. They searched in schoolbooks for the design, took what poor finery the Germans had left to them and began to sew. When our boys

marched in to take the place of the retiring Germans their eyes beheld on every side those poor, pathetic homemade flags. Scarcely one was authorative. Sone had too many stripes, some not enough. Scarcely one had the right number of stars, but in spite of that no more eloquent bits of bunting ever flew. They told ot something bigger than a military victory; of an international unselfishness, of rescue, of food and every material help given in sympathy and love. Those are flags we should most like to see. They belong in the Capitol at Washington were, by looking at them, our children can learn what was the greatest thing their fathers ever did. —Youth’s Companion.