The Pittsburgh Press (September 28, 1944)
I DARE SAY —
Fortune’s favorites
By Florence Fisher Parry
Our Commando Kelly sent me a copy of his book, One Man’s War. It certainly deserves our reading, for what he did adds one more incredible legend to the lore which our G.I.’s are providing history and literature.
From the news we hear today of the battlefronts all over the world, we know now that these G.I.’s will indeed be “Government Issue” for a long, long time to come. Their winter uniforms and equipment have just got to them at the Siegfried Line! With what mingled feelings will they receive them there!
Thinking of them, we can well blush with shame at our own facile assumption that the war was over all but for the shouting. And now I hope that we will be spared a word in the combat reports that has become so overused lately! The word “fanatical.” The Nazis are offering “fanatical” resistance, the Japs are displaying “fanatical” valor. It is an overworked word. The lost British paratroops at Arnhem could be said by the Germans to have offered fanatical resistance. Let’s at least try to be realistic and not claim for ourselves alone the virtues of valor, self-sacrifice and faith in our cause, however mistaken that of our enemy may be.
Now that we are recovering, if shamefully from our delusion that Germany would be a pushover once we reached her borders, we can, I hope with better grace, set ourselves to our war tasks at home.
We can give our blood to the Red Cross Blood Bank.
We can give our time to the last moment of it we can spare in some definite war work. There are literally millions of Christmas boxes to be filled and sent overseas within the next two weeks.
The hospitals are crying for nurses’ aides. This service is one of the most needed of all.
Work!
We are in midst of a very vital presidential campaign. What is done in the next six weeks by the citizen workers of both parties can well determine the fate of this country for years and years to come.
It is not enough for those who need to register to do so; it is not enough for each to cast his vote. Every citizen must make of himself a voluntary field worker.
There are other home-front musts. It is evident that there has been a serious letdown in gas conservation. Heavier and heavier becomes the traffic on our highways, more and more pleasure drives are indulged. The occupants of the autos traveling into town each morning on our two boulevards average about one and a half to a car. The other morning, I kept count. To every car with two or three occupants, there were seven being driven into town with only the driver – no passengers. A year ago, there was some evidence of car sharing. Not now. The buses and streetcars are bulging with standees while motorists in empty cars race by them.
The black market has become a problem. I hear presumably responsible citizens talk unconcernedly and with no effort at concealment of where and how they procure all the gas they want.
Service
Meantime, God knows it is time for us to face ourselves, for we have had an easy time of it compared with any home-front human being the world over. We have suffered the hardship of separation and suspense. Some of us have suffered that ultimate agony of separation by death, but our ordeal is nothing, nothing, compared with that which has been endured by the people of the rest of the world.
After nearly three years we are still living a peacetime life. We are looked upon as the darlings of the gods. Why we should be so specially singled out for fortune’s favor, I don’t know; but the solemn suspicion assails me: Can it be that we are being saved for what’s to come?
The world will be impoverished, but we, not have suffered impoverishment, will be called upon to give of our bounty. We will be called upon to bind up, not the nation’s, but the world’s wounds: “to care for him who has borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan; and to do all that shall achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
Can it be that this is the solemn task we are being saved for?
This being so, we must be ready.