The Ely miner., 1943-05-27
By KATHLEEN NORRIS

about a war is being so
L fearful all the time,"
writes Mildred Wilson, from
St. Paul. ST have never been
afraid in my life before, but
now I am. I'm constantly
anxious about my son and my
son-in-law, both away on ma
val duty. I'm sick with SYM
pathy and apprehension over
my daughter, % years old, ex-
pecting her first baby, and
breaking her heart over her
husbands absence. I'm wor-
ried about my husband, for
his is the furniture business, and
people in our neighborhood are con-
serving what they have, not buying
anything new! I have all the usual
worries about rationing and the
home table; my husband, like so
many other men, likes chops and
steaks and roasts, repeated end
lessly, and we can't get them any
more. A steak and fried potatoes
with coffee have composed his IA
vorite meal for years; vegetables
and sweets don't register at all.
'I want to do all I can for the
war effort, but with Phyllis baby
coming, and my man home for three
meals day, can't spare the time
to become a nurses aid or give
eight hours every third day to in
terceptor command. And so I wor-
ry, and I don't sleep, and that makes
me a nervous, half-efficient sort of
woman who shiverS at the radio
news, distrusts everyone who is con-
Quoting this war, despairs of the
worlds future, to say nothing of
Americas, and altogether is becom-
ing a burden on herself and every
one else. I wouldn't write you," the
letter ends, eff I didn't feel that thou
sands of other women, some of
whom know, are sinking into the
same morass. Have you any sug-
gestions as to the way out?"
The way out, my dear Mildred, is
like a dose of castor oil. It takes
a certain amount of courage to pour
the nauseous stuff into the spoon, to
open the mouth, and gulp the oily
disgustingness down. But when your
mind and soul are clogged and poi
soned you have to take the equiva-
lent of this dose if you are to re-
cover.
Become World Minded
You know the cure, of course. It
is to lift your spirit into a higher,
less personal, less selfish zone. In
stead of wanting safety, security,
wealth, happiness for just the few
persons you love, you must learn to
want them, and to work for them,
for all the men and women of the
world.
We have to live in the world, in
this strange little ball spinning in
cosmic space, because there is no
where else to live. There has al
ways been plenty of food and shelter
for all the peoples of the world, but
thousands of years ago rulers and
kings and soldiers and even the
prophets and priests of the Old Tes-
lament got off the beam, to use the
expressive phrase, and things began
to slip away from Gods law, and
get under the law of man.
Civilization marched steadily
ahead; houses were built, food was
refined, schools and hospitals and
colleges sprang up everywhere; men
learned to read. But alongside of all
this, evil marched as well. Bloody
wars, poverty, hunger were all toll
Grated in their primitive degrees,
and as those degrees developed, they
became greater and more wide
spread, too.
Now, with the new help that civili-
zation and science give us, we have
to 60 back those long weary centu-
ries, and begin at the beginning
again. We have to brace ourselves
to feel that no matter what the per-
sonal cost may be, it will be worth
while if we emerge from this time
of darkness into peace that is