Caption: Magazine - Illinois Magazine Selections #2 (1917)
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L ...v, .41 inois Tlie nii Volume 9 OCTOBER, 1917 azine Number 1 THE SLACK EI T H O M A S A R K L E CLARK HE"X were standing at the station waiting for the train that wastocarry the soldiers away to the training camp the bov a little still* and self- conscious in his now uniform, the mother eager, proud, her hands clenched tight in an attempt to be calm and to conceal tin pain of parting, The train pulled in. and t he t ime for separat ion arrived, 4 seemed to me that his no! going to college would more surely prove him a slacker than his going. He saw very clearlj that his duty was to finish his education; the more obviously heroic thing to him was t < don a uniform. What he feared was publie criticism, though he know- that with a completed education ho could best serve his country. The slacker, as 1 set him. is a man who 4 "Don't be a slacken". Jim." tln^ mother said as she kissed the boy good-bye, "Do your host; I'd rather you'd bo killed than be a slacker." During all these months o\' war and preparation for war 1 have been trying to understand jtast whal it means to be a slacker. Is it only in war that men are slackers when they shrink back from duly and danger, and sacrifice, and responsibility? Surely n o t shirks an obligation; who is afraid of danger, and privation, and hard work; who refuses to respond to duty ; who has a task assigned to him and who is satisfied to olo it indifferently—or even to allow it to go undone. He is not confined to tin 4 army; he is found in every walk of life in college and out of it. in every community and in every profession, He is the immediate Cause of policemen and proctors, and a other individuals and devices for checking 4 "Do you think I shall be looked upon as up on tin man who sees his duty and yet 4 4 a slacker?" a junior asked me, "if 1 conn lacks tin courage or the energy to do it. back to college and finish my course? I There never was a time in the history of am not old enough \'ov the draft, and 1 am no! sure thai I could get in to the army If I were drafted". As I talked the matter over with him, it litis country, there never was a time in the 4 lift ()( colleges when the slacker was of less use and less likely to be tenderly ban 4 died, This is no time for tin loafer and * «
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