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Show I 1 WHAT AMERICANS ; , MUST DO !' ' Real success In this world does not come from the couch of ease. Things I "' worth while are attained by sacrifice. ' i j Energy, thought, resolution must be , , u given by those who are to rise above l i' the common plane. This is the philos- ' ophy Jack London's life teaches, as j J ( J i unfolded in an article by Rose Wilder I I ' t Lane in Sunset, i . fj) When Jack London set out to be an ' I l author, he mot with keenest disapr f il jL pomtmcnt I ' j "From early morning until long after I midnight he studied and wrote," says I'll 1 Rose Lane. "Ho wrote poems, essays, ' 1 , 'I novels, stories, special articles for ' Jf Sunday supplements. He wrote fever- 1 q ishly, desperately, eight, ten, eleven ij ' u hours a day. His back ached, his eyes M i burned, his fingers, pounding the 1 f keys of an old Blickeusdorfer typc- j r writer, cramped and throbbed with ) ' pain. His fingertips were blistered 1 jf ij ' and blistered again. But a tremendous I ' driving will pushed him on. That 1,1 j., strength of will had been fostered by his hard life. There lies one reason why so many great men rise from depths of miserable poverty. While ten thousand remain to drag out maimed and useless lives, the one man who by some inner energy of mind and body, is able at all to conquer such heart-breaking obstacles, develops in the struggle, a strength which-carrles him past the soft-living millions." Jack London's struggle should be rotold to our school children, and then to the American people as a wholo, for America today Is suffering of a soft-ening soft-ening of the fiber of manhood. Wo are a great people and a mighty nation, but, even with war upon us, comparatively few, not in the foro-ranks, foro-ranks, are seriously concerned or ready to yield up personal comfort Not many are depriving themselves of the luxuries of life, not all are employing employ-ing their will power to bring to the aid of the United States their full energies. ener-gies. As Jack London labored to become a recognized writer of ability, and gripped himself with a firm determination determina-tion to succeed, so the great body of Americans today should bo setting all things else aside, resolved upon winning win-ning this war regardless of tho pleasures pleas-ures to be given up and the discomforts discom-forts to be invited. The individual triumphs tri-umphs by rigid discipline and self-exacting self-exacting effort, and so a nation must prepare itself to go forward to victory through endless toll and hardship. nn |