Whose fault is this? Are you sol diers altogether to blame? As long as church members will entertain you with dances, will serve you wine and liquor, will allow their daughters full freedom to be with you anywhere, any time, day or night, is it fair to hold you responsible for all that is taking place in the towns and cities where you are? Personally, I can riot place all the blame upon you soldiers. I honestly believe it is our Christian people who will be held responsible fpr much that is taking place wherever there are Christians. ★ ★ ★ More than likely you who read this letter will be Christians. You have a most unusual, a most wonderful op portunity to “Stand up for Jesus, ye soldiers of the cross.” If the civilian church members fail to lift His royal banner high for purity,! sobriety, de cency, then this also may be your job. If every Christian soldier in every sort of training center in these United Nations would t a k e his stand for Christ with all his heart, as truly as he is doing for his native land, such a mighty revival of Christianity would sweep over the world as would end this war in much less time than many are anticipating. The real “conflict” is not all in the front lines! As a nation we have been told we lack enthusiasm. Perhaps we are not “ pn fire” as are the Japanese with a crazed patrictism, but no one can ac cuse us of n o t being enthusiastic about ENTERTAINING you soldiers. What puzzles me is: Are you better soldiers, b e t t e r Americans, better Christians after you have participated in most of the entertainments which have been given for your benefit? Are so many dances arid the abun dance of wines and beer and stronger liquors making you soft, causing you to indulge in habits that you. had no thought of permitting before you be-
Dear Soldier: You may not have your Old Testa ment with you. The New Testament is a much more popular gift for you soldiers, so here is a verse from Psalm 46, the tenth, which tells you to “Be still, and know that I am God: I Will be exalted among the heathen, I will be ekalted in the earth.” But you are experiencing just about everything else except stillness, aren’t you? There’s the excitement of your daily training, or y o u r daily and nightly action. If you are here at home in the camps, you are given so many forms of entertainment when you are free for a while that you have no time for stillness. How can you “Be still” with all of this? Placed before m a n y of you are temptations such as you have never met before, for many of you are from farms, small v i l l a g e s , and towns where your lives were ordinarily quiet and pleasantly unexciting. Your attractive uniforms do not make you immune to the temptations which too many girls aré placing so alluringly before you. But neither do those same uniforms give you the privilege of yielding to those tempta tions any more than your old over alls back on the farms did, or your greasy shop garments did, or your regular working clothes at whatever job you had before you were called to defend your country. We heartily disapprove of the en couragement g i v e n the unmarried German girls to bear children for their fatherland. We shudder at all we hear about the treatment of women and girls by Japanese soldiers. Yet here in Christian America will be born thousands of babies to unmarried mothers, babies w h o s e unmarried fathers will be soldiers who are in training to’ fight for this land where marriage is still held sacred by the majority of real Americans.
B. B. MOORE
Accompanying the manuscript for "Dear Soldier" was a letter from the author to the Managing Editor of THE KINO'S BUSINESS. "Nearly twenty young men have gone out froth our small community," the author wrote. "There is scarcely a one left. And not a one in all that twenty had ever attended a dance such as are given for them now. It isn't because they are any better than the majority of men, but they lived where it wasn't done. Aren't there thousands more like them? Need they be treated like infants now, danced and wined and petted by pretty girls? WilT that make better, stronger, finer men and soldiers of them? Tf it were so, who of us could object? "But if I were, his mother. I'd fear the temptations which well-meaning girls and church members would place be fore my son, more than I'd dread his actual fighting. He might be wounded physically, but if he remained clean and pure morally, we both could en dure his physical hurt." came Uncle Sam’s man? Or is your faith?in the Lord Jesus who was tempted in all points even as you are being tempted, yet who did not sin— is that faith keeping you strong and clean and ready for the duties that lie before you? The magazines and newspapers are illustrated with pictures of girls and soldiers, American girls, Australian girls, British girls, Irish girls, girls wherever there are American men. It
Made with FlippingBook - Online Brochure Maker