How About the Home Front?

by Mrs. A.J. Wilder

When we buy United States Liberty Bonds and War Savings Stamps, we are open to suspicion, in our own minds at least, of not being entirely disinterested. We may be a little influenced in our saving and buying by a hope of gain, for Liberty Bonds and Savings Stamps are good investments. They are gilt-edged securities and a paying proposition.

Even when we work hard on our farms raising food to "feed the world," we are making money for ourselves and the harder we work the more we make, so perhaps we do not deserve so very much credit for the extra effort after all. We are such complex creatures and our motives are nearly always so mixed, that it is easy to deceive ourselves. I know from experience that it is very pleasant to have duty and inclination run hand in hand and to be well paid in cash for doing right.

When we give to the Red Cross, however, it is entirely different. What we give then we do not make a profit on, at least in money. We get nothing in return except a glow of satisfaction and a knowledge that we are actually helping our soldiers at the front and the ill and destitute of the world.

By the sacrifice we make in giving we show our love for humanity: our pity for the helpless and our generosity toward those less fortunate than ourselves.

It is something of which to be very proud when one's community goes over its allotment for the Red Cross as so many have done. It is another victory over the enemy, for this war is a battle of ideas and standards of life.

Disguise it as we may in concrete terms such as "the restoration of Belgium," the "rights of small nations" and the "integrity of treaties," this world war is a world conflict of ideas. This is why the fighting cannot be confined to the battle fronts: why every country is more or less in conflict internally. We are in the midst of a battle of standards of conduct and each of us is a soldier in the ranks. What we do and how we live our everyday lives has a direct bearing on the result, just as each of us will be personally affected by it.

We may have thought that a little selfishness and over-reaching on our part, a breaking of our promised word now and then if it was more convenient: a disregard of the rights of others for our own advantage, did not so much matter and were not so very wrong. Nevertheless it is these same things when done in mass by the German government and armies, that the remainder of the world abhors.

There is a connection between our motives, the way we live our lives here at home, and those vast armies facing each other in a death grapple.

In the thick of battle: under terrific bombardments that shake the earth: in the darkness of night when the poison gas comes creeping: our soldiers are fighting that right shall be the standard of the future instead of might: that the strong shall not take unfair advantage of the weak: that a pledged word and honor shall be considered sacred and shall not be broken.

Are we fighting bravely for these same things all down the line? When "Johnny comes marching home" victorious will he find that we also have won the victory on the home front?

If we are careless of our given word: if we take unfair advantage: if we spread false reports: if we are malicious and grasping and full of hate instead of kind, open-minded, fair and just, then the Prussian ideas, as insidious as their poison gas, will have vanquished in our own country those ideals for which our armies fight.

This is our battle, and must be our victory, for if the standards of life approved by the German government hold the peoples of the earth then, in a different way than was intended but in a very true sense, Germany will have conquered the world.

 Mrs. A.J. Wilder, Missouri Ruralist, (May 20, 1918): page 10.

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