Repository: UIHistories Project: War Publications - WWI Compilation 1923 - Article 25 [PAGE 35]

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Think about these things. Go home, look at your barns, and remember that if "This Thing" comes to our shores it will be well for you to burn them before the invader does. Look at your crops and your trees. If he reaches our shores cut them down and burn them. It will be better to do that than to let them fall into his hands. Look at your wife and your daughters, and be ready to follow the example of Virginius, in ancient Rome. For it were better that they were dead. Think of the liberty you have enjoyed, and choose to lie dead rather than give it up. Think of the country of which you are a part and which your fathers and yourself have helped to build up, and make UD vour mind to lav it desolate in universal ruin own the To prevent these things is our task. "To such a task," in the words of our great President, "we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are, and everything that we have, with the pride of those who know that the day has come when America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she has treasured. God helping her, she can do no other." 1 I see a vision! "I see a drumhead court-martial. I see an calm woman under the lash of words of torment men the garments will need no other white mark to reach her heart. I hear a command. I hear a report. A form crumples into a grave, and a soul takes flight to the God that gave it." But wait. My eye turns back to our own land. A messenger boy with a thin yellow envelope in his hand has just entered a quiet cottage in central Illinois. The messenger leaves. The father and mother sit alone dry eyed and still. By and by the woman, rising, goes to her husband and taking one lapel of his coat in each hand she shakes him fiercely, and Trom ' ' The 35