Page:The web (1919).djvu/424

 Better had we thrown the maudlin Statue of Liberty into the sea, or turned its face about the other way!

The young Southerner who could not read grandpap's Latin book, or any other book, who saw no daily paper and knew nothing of the outside world, knew only that he did not want to fight in a war of which he knew nothing and in which he did not think he or his had any stake. Nobody had threatened him, no men had stolen anything of his, he did not know where Germany was, and he had never seen a German to learn to hate him. Why should he fight? He concluded he would not fight. He would just hide till this war was over, because it was none of his war.

Very much of the A. P. L. work in the South had to do with getting into the young man's comprehension that our Flag was in danger; that our women and children had been killed by men that did not fight like men but like brutes. Once that got into the mountain man's mind, the day for desertion was past and gone. There are no braver or more skilled fighting men in the world than in these Southern hills. There are none more loyal. They did their part and were ready to do it wherever called. They helped win the war for America as well as those from richer states. Now that the war is over, let America forget Europe's sordid sycophants, the grinning reservists of the "unbeaten" German Army, and turn attention to these, her own children—no cuckoo product without an ancestry to claim, who have no love for this country beyond their love for this country's easy money.

MARYLAND

Largely Southern in its population, traditions and political sympathies, yet Northern in its aggressive spirit and industrial enterprise, the city of Baltimore perhaps is entitled to be called "American" more than any other big city on the Atlantic seaboard. It has always been American, and in this war has only proven anew what has always been known by those who knew Baltimore. A hundred years or so ago, in the War of 1812, its citizens fought and fell gloriously in defense of their city before the British. A beautiful monument commemorates their heroism. In this war, there