Adventure Magazine Cover, April 3, 1918 — page 187: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The Camp-Fire We know that politics and party have sometimes been put before patriotism and country. Our crisis calls for a leadership drawn from the whole people, not chiefly from one political party; from the brains and energies of the whole country, not half of it. It is our second duty to demand a coalition Government, but first we must guarantee our own full energies and support. Buy Bonds, WE KNOW that, after two years and a half of warning followed by nearly a year actually in the war, great America, the richest country in the world, with a population of a hundred millions, is now contributing to the war much money and moral support, some brains, a navy smaller than it should be, and, at this writing in Jan- uary,an army almost the size of England’s casualty lists for six or nine months. We know that great America is not able to meet the vital demand of the crisis for merchant ships—which even a neutral and pacifist country is free to build—and that at the end of a whole year our contribution of ships is still chiefly plans and provision for the future, We know that great America was so un- prepared and so incompetent in the actual test that she is not even yet able to equip the comparatively small army she has put into the field and has had to borrow from her Allies what they needed for themselves. We know now that William Jennings Bryan by his glib and silver-tongued prediction that “‘a million men would spring to arms between sunrise and sunset” has written himself down as the ass of history. We begin to feel now the whole long, bitter, tragic proof of the blunder of Unprepared- ness, It is our duty to see to it that, so long as other nations carry arms, the advocates of unpreparedness do not again bring us to the brink of catastrophe. But we must think of past unpreparedness now only as a warning for the future. The damage will be repaired, so far as it can be repaired, not by complaint but by work, loyalty, support. Buy Bonds, PEPORE our troops go into their first big battle they have begun to pay the toll of eleventh-hour preparation following three years of unpreparedness. But they who have died for unpreparedness are for a later reckoning. ‘They have no, bear- ing on our present duty to America. Our 185 present duty continues to be one thing—to do our part now. Buy Bonds. Buy all you can afford, and afford all you can by cutting out things you do not need. Buy Bonds. But do not stop there. By this time each of us knows what is asked of him, the ways in which he can help win the war. You know your duty, do it. In all things. And the foremost of these things is support and loyalty to our Administration, good or bad, so long as it remains our Administration, and to each man in it so long as he remains apart of it. For the Administration stands for America. I KNOW that in speaking thus frankly I shall bring down upon myself from a certain type of American the charge of being unpatriotic. Another of the Admin- istration’s mistakes has been the building up of the idea that any criticism of itself is disloyalty. Purely destructive criticism of it zs disloyalty, at least in its effect, but neither honest constructive criticism nor a frank facing of the facts is unpatriotic in the eyes of any one but fools. Any man or institution that denies the right of constructive criticism is un-Ameri- can and undemocratic. Only a fool or a traitor withholds one jot of his loyalty because of mistakes that can not be reme- died, but only an utter idiot or a more subtle and dangerous traitor calls it “patriotism” to allow a present mistake to go uncorrected or fails to take steps against future mistakes. We are at war, and war is facts. A war has never yet been won with mistakes. Or by incompetents. Or with excuses. If we are to win this war we can not listen to excuses, we can not leave mistakes unreme- died, we can not retain incompetents. T IS truth and frankness we need. “Tell the truth and win the war.” We want the facts, not the camouflaged facts. Whitewash is not war. Claims are not accomplishments. Sugar-coating does not destroy the bitter pill within. We have guts enough for facts, but not stomach enough for sweetened infant-food. Let us have a man’s diet. What disciple of fear and untruth can openly maintain that the American people will not fight better and make themselves better able to fight if they know the full need and danger? War makes necessary e@ 9)(0)(6) ANG Sa(CO)