Camas Prairie chronicle. [volume] (Cottonwood, Idaho) 1901-1917, 1917-05-11
PRESIDENT APPEALS
TO FARMERS
Asks Them to Assist the Ma
ton by Growing Largest
Possible Amount of Food
StuffS This Year.
My Fellow Countrymen:

My Fellow Countrymen:
The entrance of our own beloved
country ipto the grim and terrible war
for democracy and human rights which
has shaken the world creates so
many problems of national life and
action which calls for immediate con-
sideration and settlement that | hope
you will permit me to address to you
a few words of earnest counsel and ap-
peal with regard to them.
We are rapidly putting our navy
upon an effective war footing and are
about to create and equip a great
army, but these are the simplest parts
Of the great task to which we have ad-
dressed ourselves. There, is not a
single selfish element, so far as | can
see, in the cause we are fighting for.
We are fighting for what we believe
and wish to be the rights of mankind
and for the future peace and security
of the world. To do this great thing
worthily and successfully we must de-
vote ourselves to the service without
regard to profit or material advantage
and with an energy and intelligence
that will rise to the level of the enter
prise itself. We must realize to the
full how great the task is and how
many things, how many kinds and
elements of capacity and service and
self-sacriGce, it involves.
These, then are the things we must
do, and do well, besides fghting,-the
things without which mere fighting
would be fruitless:
We must supply abundant food for
ourselves and for our armies and our
seamen not only, but also for large
part of the nations with whom we have
now made common cause, in whose
support and by whose sides we shall
be fighting.
We must supply ships by the hun
dreds out of our shipyards to carry
to the other side Of the sea, submarines
or no submarines, what will every day
be needed there, and abundant mate
rails out of our fields and our mines
and our factories with which not only
to clothe and equir our own forces on
land and sea but also to clothe and
support our people for whom the gal
liant fellows under arms can no longer
work, to help clothe and equip the
armies with which we are cooperating
in Europe, and to keep the looms and
manufactures there in raw material;
coal to keep the fires going in ships at
sea and in the furnaces Of hundreds of
factories across the sea; steel out of
which to make arms and ammunition
both here and there; rails for WORKOUT
railways back Of the fighting fronts;
locomotives and rolling stock to take
the place Of those every day going to
pieces; mules, horses, cattle for labor
and for military service; everything
with which the people of England and
France and Italy and Russia have
usually supplied themselves but can
not now afford the men, the materials,
VI Lue maCnlnery 10 make.
1t is evident to every thinking man
that our industries, on the farms, in
the shipyards, in the mines, in the fac.
tories, must be made more prolific and
more efficient than ever and that they
must be more economically managed
and better adapted to the particular
requirements of our task than they
have been; and what | want to say is
that the men and women who devote
their thought and their energy to these
things will be serving the country and
conducting the fight for peace and
freedom just as truly and just as eff
fectively as the men on the battlefield
or in the trenches. The industrial
forces Of the country, men and women
alike, will be a great national, a great
international, Service Army,-a no
table and honored host engaged in the
service Of the nation and the world,
the efficient friends and saviors of free
men everywhere. Thousands, nay,
hundreds Of thousands, of men other
wise liable to military service will Of
right and Of necessity be excused from
that service and assigned to the funda-
mental, sustaining work of the fields
and factories and mines, and they will
be as much part of the great patriotic
forces Of the nation as the men under
fire.
l take the liberty, therefore, of adj
dressing this word to the farmers Of
the country and to all who work on
the farms: The supreme need of our
own nation and of the nations with
which We are cooperating is an abun-
dance Of supplies and especially food
stuffs. The importance of an adequate
food supply, especially for the present
year, is superlative. Without abun-
dant food, alike for the armies and the
peoples now at war; the whole great
enterprise upon which we have en-
barked will break down and fail. The
worlds food reserves are low. Not
only during the present emergency but