The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1917-07-24
Dorothy Dir Says
By DOROTHY DIX
: Worlds Highest Paid Woman Writer
Give the Boys a Cheer.

HlFe Tic boys u AHSCH.
Every woman is asking nowadays
how she can do her bit in this terrible
war into which we have been plunged.
Here is one concrete thing she can do.
She can give the men who are going
to the front a cheer. She can buck
them up. She can. add her courage
to their courage and so make them
invincible.
Perhaps it is because the sacrifice
that is asked of them is so new and
strange and unexpected that the
women of America have not yet risen
to the supreme height of being able
to cheerfully offer up that which is
dearer to them than life itself on the
altar of their country. Perhaps it is
because women themselves find such
comfort in tears that they can never
man.
However that may be it is fact
that the wives and mothers who have
been able to turn a brave face on
their husbands and sons who have
started forth on that fearsome jour-
ney to somewhere in France have
been few and far between. Most of
the men who have gone. and who are
about to start to answer their coun-
try's call, are having to fight a more
any they Will ever confront in battle
the despair and heartbreak of the
dear women they are leaving behind
them.
The officer in command of one of
the training camps declared the other
day that the hardest thing he had to
contend against was the letters the
boys got from home These letters
filled with dark forebodings for the
future and telling a man how he was
missed and about the vacant chair at
the table and his empty room, and
how the hahV 0riad of ie,I,.
or how his old dog wandered about
the house like restless ghost look
ing for him, and how she wept every
time she saw his old hat on the rack
and how she could neither eat nor
sleep. nor work nor do anything but
think of the terrible things that might
happen to him-why," said the Off
Ger. "a letter like that, and IT'S the
kind of letter that nine women out of
ten write to their men in camp
breaks a man all up SO that he's no
good for hours after he gets it. It
completely destroys his morale
The women who write these sob
letters do it in all love and tender
ness, and without 4 thought of the
torture they are inflicting on those
who are nerving themselves, as best
they may, to face the horrors of the
most terrible ordeal that human be-
ings have ever been called upon to en-
dure. For our men are not going ig-
AOi diliyB SdAy, TO the ITGncn-
es. They know all that it means of
danger and death, and they are not
answering the lure of mad adventure,
but the trumpet call of a solemn duty.
They need all the courage that they
can possibly summon up, and for the
women at home to weaken this. or to
add one feathers weight 10 their bur-
den, is nothing short of cruelty. 1t
is a turning of the knife in a sore
wound. 1t is stab in the heart
from which man bleeds white of
resolution and determination.
How can a man go forward when
his wife or his mother writes him that
every step he takes away from her is
breaking her heart? What strength
can he give to the grim work he has
in hand when her every letter is sod
den with tears over lis loss? What
! courage can he have with his mind
filled with the picture she paints for
him of his home draped in mourning?
OF course the WON IN who write
these doleful letters do not realize the
harm that they are doing. no do they
mean everything that they say. Nor If
they were in the mems places would
they be as much depressed by the mel
sncholy missives as the men are.
Women are comforted by ears and it
consoles them to know that they are
to understand that a man simply dis
integrateS under woman'S tears, and
that they sap the last bit of courage
that is in him Therefore, when a wo-
man writes a man that she is weeping
over his loss day and night it is just
an assurance of her love and tender
ness-the highest tribute she can pay
him-and she doesn't sense that she
is tearing the heart out of his bosom
and making him utterly miserable.
Women also like to be pitied and
they find a morbid pleasure in al
ways anticipating the worst that can
possibly happen. They know SO little
of men, even of the men nearest to
them, that they do not realize that
every fibre of manhood in man re-
volts at compassion, that men can
only struggle and achieve as long as
| they have hope, and so the women
are literally aiding the enemy and
defeating their own, when they pass
| on their own gloomy forebodings to
| those who are girding themselves up
to strike a great blow for the worlds
freedom.
| Nobody undertakes the sacrifice of
| the woman who sends her husband
and son forth to war. No one min
| imizes her sufferings, nor depreciates
her fears The bitterness is always
with those who are left behind, and
the woman who sits at home and
| waits suffers just as much as any
| bullet torn soldier at the front. for
his body can only die one death.
| While ner soul uieS d tHouSdHu oedehs
| of apprehension.
Butts the point is this: The man
must go. His country has summoned
him, and it is the woman's place to
| make his going a. easy as possible
| The man is going to do his duty to his
| country. The woman must do her
duty to her country by making her
sacrifice with outward cheerfulness.
| She must shed her tears in secret in
stead of pouring them like rain over
/ the man whose backbone they will
| melt down into a pulp.
When we have anything hard to do.
| what we need is a brace and not a
| weakening. When we have a task
\ before us that calls for all of our
| strength and all of our determination.