Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1918-03-24

p AM too old to go to war. Tom, our
son. is too young.
I am not going to write it down
4 here in black and white that I am
sorry the conditions are thus. 1 have
heard other men say they wished they
were a few years younger. or that their
sons were old enough to get into the
trenches. Some of these men have be-
lieved; others I have not. And 1 have
no wish to prejudice you at the start
by making what you may look upon as
hypocritical professions of patriotic
valor.
But we, Mary and I, have wanted to
feel that we were not slackers. Neither
of US has any very near relatives in the
ranks. It SO happens that in our i'm
mediate families there is no one of
draft age. and the two or three cous-
ms who we think ought to volunteer,
for some reason or another. have not
felt the call.
1 may be something like Artemus
Ward. who was willing to sacrifice all
his wifes relations on the altar of his
country. but these volunteering
cousins are something of sore spot
with me: so perhaps l have said more
than | was justified in saying. The
cousins. it happens. are Mary's, not
mine, and some of my remarks have
been resented by the cousinly families,
And as Mary has upheld my views, re-
lations just now are not so cordial as
they always had been in the past.
k*
But this is straying from what l set
out to write about. The subject of
those stay-at-honfe cousins is as in
sistently intrusive as was Banquo's
ghost 1t simply will not stay buried.
What I want to make clear is that.
having no man to don khaki. we have
sought to do whatever we could to help
in other ways. With the cost of living
as high as it is, government clerks
salary doesn't afford much Of a
margin for investment. but I took
subscribed for liberty bonds until the
hurt of meeting the payments is real,
not merely figure of speech. l have
subscribed also to the Y. M. c. A. fund
for camp activities and Mary is mem
Der of the Red Cross. helps make band
ages and things and in addition has
knitted three sweaters for the soldiers.
Her latest Red Cross subscription was
at the cost of new Easter bonnet and
other clothing of which she is badly in
need. Tom and Bettina. our little girl.
are buying thrift stamps. Tom, who is
fourteen, earned considerable money
during the winter, SnOVel1nS snow,
taking care of furnaces and doing other
odd jobs. but money to pay for BETH
mas stamps has to come out of my
pocket, and lately Old Mother Hub
bard's cupboard has had nothing on my
pocket for baroness.
We are not asking any special credit
for this Other families, most average
families, 1 think, are doing as much
Others. who have sent sons to the war,
have done SO much more that we never
can hope to square the account
1t had seemed to me, after surveying
the field. that we had gone the limit;
that there was nothing more, under
the circumstances. that we could do
toward helping to win the war. But
Mary was not satisfied. There must be
some further way, she insisted, in
which we could help. Then she had an
inspiration. We would have a war
garden.
The idea didn't make much of a hit
with me. at first. To begin with our
back yard didn't look like 2 very prom
Using field for agricultural exploitation.
] tried several years ago to get some
grass to grow there, but 1 succeeded
only in creating an oasis or two in an
otherwise desert
When I was a boy up in New York
state, we always had a garden, but the
garden spot is not one Of those scenes
fNmy childhood which are dear to my
heart when fond recollection presents
them to view. My most vivid recollec-
ton of our garden is that the potatoes