Charlevoix county herald. (East Jordan, Mich.) 189?-1953, 1918-03-29
Get Intothe War
Next Vacation
School Students Planning to I'M
prove Their Time.

ton? Already our students are making
their plans. Some of the older boys
have been trying to find out just how
they can get into war work, for every
: one wants to do something to help.
! Not that they are going to quit school
to join the military. They have read
the statements of President Wilson and
many other war leaders that the most
important thing for them to do is to
finish school-that the United States
!; already has more men, obtained thru
, the draft, than it can equip and arm,
and that the fellow who sticks to his
, school until his course is completed is
. going to be more valuable to his coun-
try, in the war and after it, than the
boy who, quitting before his mind is
| trained, can be only follower, not
, leader.
: Now the Government has found a
way for the older boys-those 16 and
older-to do war service, to do just the
thing that most needs to be done this
year. It is to enlist in the United
: States Boys Working Reserve, to
obtain commission and to wear the
distinctive badge of that division of our
fighting forces. The boy who does that
will serve, we are sure, as faithfully as
he would serve if he were in the
trenches, struggling through mud,
: among rats and the bodies of his fallen
comrades, as faithfully as though he
were afloat on sea strewn with mines
and hidden submarines, not knowing
what moment he would go down. And
by performing well his enlistment in
the Reserve, the boy will be doing his
part as much as any other fighting man
in the war.
What has the boy of the Reserve to
do? 1t is easiest to explain and to un-
derstand, this way:
We can truthfully say of our Country
in this war, as in the old poem, "We've
got the ships, we've got the men, we've
got the money, too" The only thing
we're not sure about, the only weak
point in our attack using football
term where we can fall down, is on
food. And ii looks like we may fall
down there.
Just because you have enough to eat
at home don't think everybody has.
Il, More than a million of our men are un-
der arms now; they are not producing
food, and they must eat-and goodness
knows we want them to eat hearty. II
must be awful to have to drill, drill,
drill-hours and hours-days and days,
or to struggle with the enemy in a
trench, or out in No Mans Land, with
out a full stomach. Imagine yourself
= off there, away from "the folks" de-
pending on food from back home-and
none coming!
Then, besides our own soldiers,
there are millions of others-our allies
who are fighting side by side with our
boys land not producing any food
whose farms have become battlefields,
torn and bloody, and who must eat,
too; and other millions of women, boys,
girls, little children, in those war-rack-
ed lands who have been living on short
rations for two or three years and
whose rations are getting shorter every
month. The United States must help
to feed them. Their boys must not
: grow thin aud weak for want Of food,
they must be kept strong, for perhaps
they will have to 90 into the war be-
fore long, taking the places of their
e slain and wounded fathers or brothers.
Then there are all the men on the seas,
n the brave fellows who face death hour.
e ly as their ships patrol the ocean lanes,
l. holding back the enemy from the ships
n that are carrying our boys, and
d ammunition, and food, to the scene Of
y the war. They, too, must eat.
e Ones first thought perhaps would be
y that OF course the Uuited States, with
the greatest farms in the world, can dc
j. this food-producing job all right, and
so they might, if countless thousands oi
y men hadn't gone into the war from the
farms. Every man leaving the farm
means the direct loss of food that
!, would feed large numbers of men,
!, Some 5000 farm workers have gone in
to war work from the farms of Michi
gan alone. There are few men fol
= their places. The papers the other day
e quoted the President of the Detroit
Board Of Commerce as saying that the
q only hope is the boys, that unless the
4. boys 90 to the farms this summer the
women will have to go! Government
IS leaders in Washington have been say
st ing the same thing. When responsible