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Show "The Empty Room" That is the caption of an advertisementone adver-tisementone of the most inspiring inspir-ing advertisements we have ever seen. The illustration shows a middle-aged man, standing alone and looking into a boy's bedroom. The text has him saying: "This is my boy's room. "This is where he slept. "This is where he dreamed a child's dreams. "Tills is where he saw a man's visions. "Here, in tills empty room, are faded pictures of teammates and heroes . . . books scribbled over with notes and exclamations ... the gloves and spike shoes we hung up for good before he went to war .. the silver cup lie won at Sea Bright, bright pennants . . . and all the care- Inca tnpmnvnnria the echoes of his days. "If fathers could only pour their hate through the hot barrels of smoking guns and write the records rec-ords of. their grief with bayonet steel. "They said I was too eld to fight though I'm only 50. "But, if I'm too old to sight and drop a stick of bombs, I'm not too old to lay my money on the line for War Savings Stamps and Bonds! "Maybe I am too stiff and slow to fly, but I've got control enough to keep my car speed under 40 . . . so they can keep their fighting planes above 400! "And if I can't march 30 miles a day with a fu'l pack, I can walk two miles to work and back to help save gas and rubber! "No. I'm not bitter any more because be-cause I won't win this war behind a gun or on a ship or in the sky. "I've come around to thinking i that here at home we've got the I job of passing the ammunition a-j a-j long, of sacrificing little things, cf giving up and going without, of looking ahead to 'less' instead of 'more.' Somebody's got to do the necessary, undramat'.c things . . . and I guess that's what older men are for." To the United States Rubber Co., which sponsors this advertisement, and to the artist and the writer who prepared it, our thanks. Through ; the door of an empty room they ( have given us a glimpse beyond the squabbling and striving for advan-I advan-I tage, the petty arguments and futile buck passing that sometimes seem to be the chief subtance of our war effort here at home, into the real heart of America. |