The evening Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1918-1920, 1918-09-28
The Fighting Fourth

Samuel Hopkins Adams, one of
Americas best known writer's, has
written a four minute speech based
on the material furnished in the bull
letin provided to $4,000 speakers by
the Four Minute Men of the Commit
tee on Public Information for use
during the campaign of the Fourth
Liberty Loan. The style of the noted
novelist will be readily recognized IN
his Four Minute effort which follows:
"This is, going to be little a
Minute talk on business. I'm going
to talk to you as business men and
women. For we're all in business
together new; the business Of war;
the business of licking the Kaiser.
We're in business as the co-partner-
ship of Uncle Sam & Company. 1t
ought to give us feeling of salts
faction to be partners in the biggest
and most important business enter
prise in the world today.
"Like all going and successful
businesses it takes money to run it.
We've got to finance it by putting
our money into Liberty Bonds. I'm
here to give you some details about
what becomes of the money that
Uncle Sam expects US all to put into
this new Liberty Loan-all US part
ners in the business.
"When a business man or woman,
such as you are, is asked to put
money into an enterprise, he nat
urally warts to know what that
money is going to be used for. He
wants to know where it's going. He
wants to knew what he gets for it.
GAIL right I'm here to report on
that. We all know how magnifcently
our boys have been going ahead over
there, with the Huns just couple
of jumps in front of their bayonets.
Now let's see what all this is costing
in dollars. These figures that I'm
going to give you have been spe-
cially worked out for the 4-Mlnute
Men by an officer of the French High
Commission and corps of American
experts. So they're right. Take,
for instance, a drive forward on a
ten-mile front. What do you sup
pose that costs? Well; the first
twenty-four hours of it costs just
about a million dollars an hour. And
that doesn't count the cost of ou1
boys lives, too precious to be reck-
oned in dollars.
Say there are five divisions, total
ling one hundred thousand men in the
drive. They would have more thar
two thousand artillery pieces, light
and heavy, and these would shoo
away in the first twenty-four hours
action close to eighteen million dol
lars worth of shells, some of then
costing as high as a hundred dollars
apiece. Then, the rifles and machine
guns will use more than half mil
lion dollars worth of the lighter ant
cheaper ammunition. The least yo1
can estimate the wear and tear o.
the guns at is five and half mil
lion dollars more. Total, twenty
four millions for the days work. /
million an hour!
at comes high. But see what
does to the Huns! And see what
means to our boys. For one well
placed heavy shell will put an enem
machine-gun completely out of bus
ness, and save hundreds of lives
the advancing infantry. (And you
notice, ou~ infantry has been dom
a lot of advancing lately.) An a
tillery barrage will cut through ar
blow up miles of barbed wire ental
clement ard save not hundreds bl
thousands of lives of our men WI
would be moved down like grass
they had to stop and cut their oW
way through. 1t comes high, all tn
ammunition. But you see it's wor
it.
"And you see, don't you, whe
And you see, don't you, whe
your dollars are going? These We
invested Liberty Bond dollars tn
some back to you with interes
They're going into Germany. They