The Lakeland evening telegram. (Lakeland, Fla.) 1911-1922, 1919-01-30
The Rhineland, Christmas. 1911,

| Dear America.
your sons are coming home. The
TASK you set before them is nearly
cone and now, day by day, week by
week. month by month"; your ships
are bringing us home.
II we have done well, it was for
icVe OF you. Dimly we understood
that we had been sent forth to slay
something which, If it throve un-
checked, would one day reach out
across the seas and destroy you. Very
clearly we understood that by our
serves would you be judged among
ire free peoples; that the hour had
struck for US to show mankind the
mettle OF our pasture. And believe
tfls-there was not one Of US who
did not walk a little straighter, live
little cleaner, work little better,
nght a little harder on that account
Nanny" a Stevedor wrote in his
Mothers Day letter last spring. ~
want folks to see your raising in me {"
America, it was so with every one Of
us. We wanted all the world to see
your raising in US.
/ And this is written just to tell you
that those ships will bring back more
than 100000 men. every one a bet
ter citizen than when we sailed away
, Better citizens, because we know
each other better. Rich and poor, high
and low, rough and polished, East and
West, North and South-the war has
mixed us all together. Alabama and
Iowa have Joined to form single
brigade, and what a brigade! Oregon
has fought shoulder to shoulder with
New York and means more TO New
York than ever she macmillan ever
she could have meant-before.
Better citizens because many of US
almost a million Of us--have, for a
time, dwelt in that community spirit
which nowhere In this workaday
world is quite so animate as It was
IN that strange, simple country which
was na11ad tho front
Above all, better citizens, because
you, America, mean more to us than
ever before. For one thing, we have
had to learn what it is to do without
you. Some for a little while, others
for interminable months, we have
been obliged to do without you. or
course, the whole A. r. Though
We have tried to hide it in our letters,
has been as abysmally homesick az
the most jealous mother could have
| wished. But surely that was no bad
thing.
Then, too, we have seen such shin
! irg things done in your name. We
who were at Chateau Thiery and
| northwest of Verdun have seen men
in olive drab and forest green beside
i! US show themselves made Of such
stuff as taught us new wonder fer
the land that could breed them. There
were some Of us who had to set forth
from our own front gate and journey
all the way to the Marine to discover
America.
We Of this generation had come to
take our country for granted. We had
| come to take our liberty as a matter
Of course, like the air we breathed
and the unfailing sun. 1t was not sc
| with the generation that wrung the
first homesteads from the wilderness.
II was not so with the generation that
conceived the nation in liberty and
dedicated 1t 70 the proposition tnat
all men are created equal. 1t was NOT
so with the generation that fought a
| civil war to prove whether that ma,
ton, or any nation, so conceived anu
so dedicated, could long endure. Bu'
we've Of the easy spring OF lSl'-'
were like the idle sons OF some rlch
man inheritors of fortune when
only he could value who had by toll
and sacrifice amassed it. Now we have
; dome more than inherit the treasure
We have earned II. We were chii-
dren of great estate. We have added
to II.
And 50, dear America, we write you
from the Rhine. In the name OF
those who cannot return, in the name
q, the best Of all, those who re De
eide the Marine and the oureq anc
TIE yesle and the Aire and the Mouse