{ title: 'The Rio Grande rattler. ([McAllen], Hidalgo County, Tex.) 1916-1917, February 23, 1918, Page 6, Image 6', download_links: [ { link: 'http://www.loc.gov/rss/ndnp/ndnp.xml', label: 'application/rss+xml', meta: 'News about NYS Historic Newspapers - RSS Feed', }, { link: '/lccn/sn87030234/1918-02-23/ed-1/seq-6/png/', label: 'image/png', meta: '', }, { link: '/lccn/sn87030234/1918-02-23/ed-1/seq-6.pdf', label: 'application/pdf', meta: '', }, { link: '/lccn/sn87030234/1918-02-23/ed-1/seq-6/ocr.xml', label: 'application/xml', meta: '', }, { link: '/lccn/sn87030234/1918-02-23/ed-1/seq-6/ocr.txt', label: 'text/plain', meta: '', }, ] }
Image provided by: New York State Military History Museum
4 GAS ATTACK GAS ATTACK Published weekly by and for the men of the Twenty-seventh Division, U. A., a t Camp W adsworth, Spartanburg, S. C., under the direction of the Camp W adsworth Young Men’s C h ristian Association. Honorary Editors— M ajor General John F. O’Ryan. Brigadier General Charles L. Phillips. L t Colonel Franklin W. Ward. E rnest W. Leslie, Camp Y. M. C. A. Secretary. Publication Committee -— Dr. Paul Moore Strayer, Chairman. J. S. Kingsley, Editor-In-Chief. E. W. Leslie. Editor —- Pvt. Richard B. Connell, Co. A, 102d Military Police. Associate Editor— P v t Charles Divine, H e a d q u a rters Sanitary Squad No 1. Art Editor — Pvt Richard J. Kennedy, 102d Supply Train. Business Manager — ■ Theodore F. Elwortk, Y. M. C. A. Advertising Manager— Regtl. Supply Sergt. Gaylord W. E lliott, 102d Ammunition Train. Editorial Staff -— Lieutenant Edward Streeter, 52d Brigade Headquarters. R a y F . J e n n e y , Y . M. C. A . P rivate W alter A. Davenport, O. T. C. Private Fred J. Ashley, Headquarters Troop. Private Keppler A. Bisbee, 105th Field Artillery. PRICE, TEN CENTS FOR TH IS ISSUE. Address, Gas A t t a c k , Camp W adsworth, Spartanburg, S. C. Subscription terms, $1.50 for 3 months. Contents of this Magazine Copyrighted, 1918. LET THEM HOWL! Recently some keen investigator tipped Congress off to the fact that Camp Wadsworth is an island completely surrounded by moonshine. He said,, as all investigators always say, “ something must be done about this.’’ He went still further. He declared that ‘ ‘ everything possible must be done to prevent the illicit selling of liquor to soldiers.” In his next sentence he stated that corn liquor around Camp Wadsworth brings $12 a quart. There is an element of humor in this. A grim jest, in good sooth. Being a soldier ourself, we know how nobly the average private can withstand the temptations of corn liquor at $12 a quart. (It’s vile stuff, any w a y ; tastes as if a houn’ dawg had slept in it). We feel like enquiring of the astute investigator: “ Where doth thou obtain that material?” Or, in issue language, “ where do you get that stuff?” Moonshine isn’t common around here. It is qs uncom mon as sunshine was during most of January and the first part of February. The truth is, drinking hard stuff is pretty much out of style in this here new Division. There’s no fun in sneak ing behind a mule-stable and taking a hasty swig of what resembles shellac. There’s no percentage in answering reveille with a taste like a picket line and in a visual condition that makes you see three top sergeants. One is enough. We are soldiers now. We want to be good ones. W e ’ve got to be, if we are going to lick the Huns, for they are bearcats as soldiers. T h a t’s why we agree with Major General O’Ryan that we are much better off on the sprinkling cart. But this editorial is not a earrie-nation against booze. It simply wants to point out that such an editorial is not necessary down here. We haven’t any booze problem. Oh, yes, occasionally someone smuggles in a quart from New York and there are a few headaches and perhaps a month’s fatigue for somebody in that company the next day. Or, perhaps, some connoisseur inoculates himself with some of the dollar a gulp liquid—T. N. T. and howls like a dog outside his captain’s tent until he is given a nice, easy job in the kitchen bathing dishes. But how often does that happen in your company ? Investigators, professional Puritans, busybodies, holier- than-thou’s-who-take-a-nip-when-the-door-is-closed, a n d calamity howlers generally, may scream till their pink neckties drop off that we have artesian wells of absinthe and rivers of rum in every company street, but we won’t mind. We know, and so does anybody who counts, that we are sober, industrious, and full of fight, and that we aren’t apt to go to the canines by the corn licker route, even if they reduce the price to $10 a quart. THEIR BIT AND THEIR UTMOST. Our always charming friends, the patriotesses of Con verse College, have adopted as their war-cry the striking shibboleth—‘ ‘ We will do, not our BIT, but our UTMOST!” No doubt they will. Converse has been a hospitable hostess to us. Under the benevolent censorship of Dean Gee, many of us have been entertained at the college, and its excellent audi torium has been opened to all of us on numerous occa sions for company shows, concerts and the like. If it were not against regulations, we would take off our hats to the young ladies, collectively and severally, and thank them (with the Dean’s permission, of course) for their kindness to young men far from Smith, Vassar and Wellesley. As it is, we salute them—smartly. But getting hack to their war-cry about doing not their bit but their utmost, as the poetess Miss Doolittle would say, we believe that the young ladies, in their ardor, have been led into error in their interpretation of the word “ b it.” Much as we admire the young ladies, our fatal passion for the undraped truth compels us to say that their utmost, utterly utter though it may be, must, after all, be only a “ b it.” This in no way disparages their utmost. It will probably be one of the prettiest and most winning utmost s that was ever ntmosted. But none of ns, be we generals, privates or Converse College girls, can do more than a bit in this mighty affair. When a man says he is going to do his “ b it,” he may mean that he is going to give up his business, his happi ness, his fortune and his life. But with millions doing the same thing, his all isn’t so much, after all. We are not reproving the young ladies for interpreting “ b it” literally. We are merely pointing out to them, in an extremely friendly spirit, that any m an’s utmost is an infinitesimaliy small iota—in other words—a bit. However, it may very well be that others think that they are doing their bit by suffering some trifling incon venience, by doing just a little to let the soldiers know they are behind them (3,000 miles). Actors who give patriotic recitations at bazaars, rich men who buy Liberty Bonds (a good, safe 4%), women who cut out beefsteak on meatless days, and have lobster, able-bodied young men who hold down shell-proof jobs on the Commission of Advertising for the Commission to Disseminate Propa ganda Advocating a Spatless Monday—all these camou flaged slackers are bit-doers in the wrong sense. Go ahead, young ladies of Converse, do your utmost and you will be doing a very welcome bit. R. E. C.
