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Show "LET GEORGE DO IT." It is a lamentable fact that thousands thous-ands of otherwise good, loyal citizens of this country have never outgrown that boyish inclination to want "George" to do it. They have not realized that both themselves and "George" have grown to man's stature sta-ture and assumed man's obligations. In fact we as a people have been long accustomed to regard with complacency com-placency that familiar quotation, "That which is everybody's business is nobody's business," until the very thought has become a part of our very natures. But we are now being rudely aroused to the unpleasant fact that "George" is busy too busy to assume as-sume the obligations that we fain would shirk. He has also a task that is calling for the best that is in him. In this emergency there are but two courses left to us either to bravely shoulder our load and march with the workers, or shirk the responsibility re-sponsibility and be relegated to the rear with the other slackers. And what a world of shame and disgrace can he compressed into that word "slacker." With what contempt we have always regarded the balky horse, rearing and plunging and fretting fret-ting himself into a fever just to escape es-cape the task of drawing a load, the burden of which would have been far less tiresome than his silly, obstinate objections. Thus with some people who call themselves good Americans. The load they are asked to assume would not prove at all oppressive if taken up cheerfully and carried patiently and bravely. It isn't only the German spy, the German sympathizer or even the pro-German pro-German American who is doing most to clog the wheels of the great war machine. The heaviest drag to that machine is the man who whines for ' "George" to do the work that even his own craven conscience tells him he, himself, should do. He! is not only not a help, but is a dead weight because he is leaving udone that which his government had every reason to expect he would do. Reader, if you are expecting "George" to do it, take another think. "George" is busy desperately busy, and has neither the time nor the inclination in-clination to take up the burden you have so shamefully cast down and abandoned. |