Ashland tidings. [volume] (Ashland, Or.) 1876-1919, 1918-03-04

against us with machine guns and all
the modern instruments of warfare,
and we had no guns, no ammunition,
nothing but sheer strength of will to
go on, it was really the letters from
home that held the lines for us. We
did it because the home-folk expected
us to do it, and said so in their let
ters.
You may say that this is all senti-
ment. Well, this is war of sentl-
ment. It's sentiment that took us
over there to fight, and it is senti-
ment that is taking you Americans.
Anyhow, soldiers are like that.
I've known some of them that have
MT gotten a word from home in all
the time they have been gone, more
than three years now. 1t may have
been because their women were slack
ers, and it may have been because
their letters had gone astray. They
were very different lot, as a rule,
from the chaps who got letters from
home regularly, and they went into
the fight with different spirit
Sometimes a boy who hadn't heard
tu.n
would get his letters at last, lot of
them in bunch. You ought to have
seen his face when he saw his name
on the envelope, and knew that those
letters were for him. You ought to
have seen how many times he got
those letters out and reread them,
when he thought no one was look
ing! You ought to have seen the vim
with which he went into the next bat
tle!"
What kind of letters should the
home-folk write to the soldiers at the
front? Literary quality isn't the
thing most needful in them, OF
course. Perhaps the best of them
all are the ones packed full of little
homely details-account of the new
neighbors across the street, and of
the words the baby has learned to
say, and of how Jimmy is growing
out Of all his clothes, and getting to
look more like his daddy every day
and if he just grows up to be half
sc good man it will be all right.
These are the letters that are often
est re-read by the soldier before he
goes over the top-just commonplace
letters that tell of everyday happen
ings back home, and of the love and
the trust that are in keeping for him
there.
Certain other types of letter ought
never to be sent to the men at the
front. One is that written by the
selfish or thoughtless woman whose
closely written pages are blurred
with her tears, and taken up with
her own sorrow in having her soldier
so far from home, and her plea for
him to come back at once, since
everything is going wrong without
him.
Moral conditions in the army are
a great deal better than is common
ly reported, Capt. Pearson said. No
mother, he thought, needed to worry
more about her soldier son on this
score than she would if he were any
where else. The army is as safe a
place for boy as can be found. But
the hometown across the seas seems
a long way from the shell-scarred
field in France, and there is little to
remind man of the home standards
and home traditions in the strange
new life within range Of the bursting
shells. He needs letters from his
family to do 1t. In maintaining high
moral conditions, as we'll as In keep
ing the morale of the army what II
should be, Capt. Pearson believes
that letters from home play a larger
part than any other thing.
All women want to help in war
time. The trouble is taht most of |
them would like to 60 over to France,
or in some way to give personal serv-
Ice to the soldiers. But the real way
to be of aid is to do ordinary, unspec-
tacular things over here, to send
their men off cheerfully, and to write
the kind of letters that keep them of
good courage.
When 1t comes to sending home
boxes to the soldiers overseas" Capt.
Pearson said, women should be sure
that they send gifts that are needed,
and that won't spoil en- route. A lot
Of junk merely cutters things up for
The soldiers there. But letter is a
gift that is always timely and never
n the way.
War just shows how wonderful
can be. But sometimes they
1on't understand how lonesome SOL
1iers get, and how far from every
hing they feel over there on the
border of mo Mans, and" They
wait for answers to their letters, and