DIY History | Transcribe | World War I Diaries and Letters | Conger Reynolds newspaper clippings, 1916-1919 | 1918-03-25 Des Moines Capital Clipping: ""On Coming to France"" Page 1

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Conger Reynolds newspaper clippings, 1916-1919

1918-03-25 Des Moines Capital Clipping: ""On Coming to France"" Page 1

Sunday, March 25, 1918-DES
On Coming to France
PAUL MOWRER OFFERS SUGGESTIONS.
(This is the fourth of a series of articles written by Mr. Mowrer on the general theme. "On Coming to France."-Editor).
IN THE DARK HOUR
In time of war the mind looks inward; it plunges down into the roots of the race, there to find strength. When comes the dark hour, in the cheerless camp, in hospital, in the vigil of long nights; when the revery turns to childhood, to the home where we were bred, to the mother whose only care was our well-being; when tho will softens; when bitterness fills the heart, and we ask ourselves the aching question, 'What is all this to me? Why should there be this burden upon me?"-then let us go farther back. Think of the stock from which we are sprung, the men and women who made America.
WHAT OUR FOREBEARS DID
Even to ourselves, alone in the darkness, dare we complain? We are the sons of explorers, mariners and emigrants-men without fear; the sons of pioneers, soldiers and Indian fighters; of frontiersmen, solitary, stoical, ingenious; of miners and mountaineers, inured to hardships; of trappers, hunters, coureurs de bois, men who dared the perils of the vast forest, sleeping by campfires, eating coarse food, enduring the coldest winters with hardly a shelter. Our grandmother's grandmothers rode on rafts or on wagons, miles upon miles into the wilderness, seeking new homes; their hearts were of oak, their muscles of hickory; nothing deterred them. Our grandfather's grandfathers limped barefoot in the snow at Valley Forge, braving starvation; their wills of iron. Our blood is that of the Alamo and of the men who fell with Custer. We are the children of the veterans of four years of murderous civil war-the bloodiest war the world had known till the year 1914. The men of Shiloh, Gettysburg, Chattanooga and Spotsylvania Courthouse were our forebears. They knew how to suffer with grimly set lips. They were ready to die, sooner than swerve from their high purpose. We, too, as truly as the men of Washington, as truly as the men of Grant and Lee-we, too, are Americans. PAUL MOWRER. With the French Armies. (Copyright, 1918, by the Chicago Daily News Co.)

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Sunday, March 25, 1918-DES On Coming to France PAUL MOWRER OFFERS SUGGESTIONS. (This is the fourth of a series of articles written by Mr. Mowrer on the general theme. "On Coming to France."-Editor). IN THE DARK HOUR In time of war the mind looks inward; it plunges down into the roots of the race, there to find strength. When comes the dark hour, in the cheerless camp, in hospital, in the vigil of long nights; when the revery turns to childhood, to the home where we were bred, to the mother whose only care was our well-being; when tho will softens; when bitterness fills the heart, and we ask ourselves the aching question, 'What is all this to me? Why should there be this burden upon me?"-then let us go farther back. Think of the stock from which we are sprung, the men and women who made America. WHAT OUR FOREBEARS DID Even to ourselves, alone in the darkness, dare we complain? We are the sons of explorers, mariners and emigrants-men without fear; the sons of pioneers, soldiers and Indian fighters; of frontiersmen, solitary, stoical, ingenious; of miners and mountaineers, inured to hardships; of trappers, hunters, coureurs de bois, men who dared the perils of the vast forest, sleeping by campfires, eating coarse food, enduring the coldest winters with hardly a shelter. Our grandmother's grandmothers rode on rafts or on wagons, miles upon miles into the wilderness, seeking new homes; their hearts were of oak, their muscles of hickory; nothing deterred them. Our grandfather's grandfathers limped barefoot in the snow at Valley Forge, braving starvation; their wills of iron. Our blood is that of the Alamo and of the men who fell with Custer. We are the children of the veterans of four years of murderous civil war-the bloodiest war the world had known till the year 1914. The men of Shiloh, Gettysburg, Chattanooga and Spotsylvania Courthouse were our forebears. They knew how to suffer with grimly set lips. They were ready to die, sooner than swerve from their high purpose. We, too, as truly as the men of Washington, as truly as the men of Grant and Lee-we, too, are Americans. PAUL MOWRER. With the French Armies. (Copyright, 1918, by the Chicago Daily News Co.)