OCR Text |
Show STOP THE GOSSIPERS IN accordance with an appeal made by the National Committee of Patriotic Societies, the Utah Agricultural College Col-lege is leading a movement,, to silence the foolish gossipers or the German propagandists who are thoughtlessly or maliciously circulating seditious lies about the war situation. The most famous of these unfounded rumors so widely circulated may be briefly retold as follows: Americans apparently loyal tell us that we should keep our soldiers at home and not subject them to danger on European battle fields. This statement state-ment had its inception in' German-' 'sources: its authors well knew that if we did not, fight in France, we would be made to fight in our own country. A German has been circulating the report to his customers, that our sol-iers sol-iers at the cantonments must buy their food or starve to death. This was reported to the Government and the German has been interned, but the rumor ru-mor will doubtless go on. There is much talk of this being a rich man's war. This accusation is absolutely ab-solutely false. -The rich are paying far more for the war than any other class of citizen. The laboring men are employed em-ployed as never-before and are receiving receiv-ing the highest wages in history.. In order to frighten mothers" and fathers of our soldiers, exagerated statements have been made as tothe very large percentage, of casualties in the armies. As a matter of fact, the actual official figures for casualties in the entire French army for the twelve months of 1916 are 2.75 per cent. This includes prisoners, who, of course, are not all killed. In many towns in the middle west the story is being quietly passed around that several transports filled with troops have been sunk. According to this highly colored tale, a distressed parent who had not heard from his son for several weeks finally appealed to Secretary Daniels and was told "your son and thousands of other American soldiers are at the bottom of the ocean." The National Committee showed these reports to Mr. Daniels who promptly and emphatically stamped them as. false. Such stories are a great detriment to the American cause. The moment a loyal citizen hears, one of the above or a similar story, he will immediately demand de-mand full proof of the assertion or that the distributor of such distressing and hurtful gossip cease circulating his lies. n |