The Washington herald., 1917-08-20

only last a few months, but when a
man is married he is married for a
long, long time, and when he makes
a cowardly. dastardly marriage, il
seems longer.
The Stacker who thinks he is get.
ting out of doing his bit by getting
| married is as sure as there is God
Of Retribution to get his punishment
| that fits his crime. Something with
boiling oil in it, you know. He may
save his worthless skin, but he cannot
save his soul from torture at the
hands of the woman to whom he Is
married who knows his shame and
who fiays him with it.
As for the women who marry slack
ers, they get what they deserve, and
, worse fate than that there is none.
The man who has no sense of obliga-
ton to his country will have no sense
Of obligation TO his family. He will
never feel that. because he has mar
ried a woman and brought children
into the world, it is up TO him to work
and support them. Not he. He will
make the kind of a husband that SAYS
let George do it, and who goes with
his wife back to her home to live on
her folks.
The man who will not do his bit
for his country will not do his bit for
his family. He is lazy and shiftless
and worthless, and self-indulgent and
selhSh-the sort OF a man who always
develops chronic invalidism when
there is any real work to be done, and
who lies down on the job and lets his
wife take in boarders to support him.
The man who is afraid to so to the
front in battle will always be the man
who is afraid to go to the front in
life. He is a born piker. He lacks
grit and courage and initiative, and
the woman who marries him will al
ways have a straw man that she will
have to hold up.
The man who hides behind a wom-
ans skirts when his country calls him
will make the sort of a husband who
follows in Adams footsteps and lays
all of his sins and weaknesses on his
wife's shoulders. If he is a drunkard
he will say that his wife drove him to
drink. If he fails in business he will
declare that his wife's extrava gance
ruined him. His wife will be a scape-
goat offered uD for his sins as well as
for his cowardice
The Stacker who will not stand by
his county in her hour of need is the
type of man who is a wife deserter
He is the sort Of man who takes the
youth and beauty of a woman, who
let's her work and pinch and economize
trying to help him get a start in the
world, and then when they are pros
porous, largely through her efforts,
and the woman has grown fat and
grizzle-headed and lost her good looks,
deserts her for some pretty fluffy
headed young girl.
Or, in another rank of life, he is the
man who when his wife is sick and
food is dear and the children are cry
ing. and a new baby is expected in
the already overcrowded home nest,
puts on his hat and walks out and
never comes back any more, leaving
his wife to fight alone the hard battle
of the poor.
That's the kind of a husband a
Stacker makes. girls. 1t takes exactly
the same qualities to make good hus-
band that it does to make a good SOL
der. 1t takes courage and determi-
nation, and the ability and willingness
to fight for hearth and home. 1t
takes loyalty and conservation to
duty and the obligations that one has
assumed, and IL a man defaults on
these where his country is concerned
he will default on them in privatel ife.
The trouble with a Stacker, you see,
is that the yellow isn't just in spots.
1t runs all through. And matrimony
is not a cure for it. Don't try 1t.
Dorothy Dix's articles appear regu-
larly in this paper every Monday,
Wednesday and Friday.