When your Uncle Sam rolls up his sleeves preparatory to a scrap he begins to take on size that distinguishes him from the ordinary fighter. He goes about it methodically, and allows himself the proper time in which to get in readiness. Then he takes a running jump into the middle of the ring. After this the disinterested onlooker isn’t long in catching the fact that, as a mere matter of discretion, it is far better to be _with_ Uncle Sam than to be _against_ him. Also it must creep into his mind that if he doesn’t want to be _smashed_ into a proper state of mind, the best thing to do is to _join in and help_. If a hundred million people want peace bad enough to fight for it, both for themselves and their neighbors, it isn’t for _slackers_ either in thought or in spirit to stand on the side lines and watch the scrap. People of that mould do not belong in America. Everybody must do his part and do it right. There are thousands of ways of helping on toward victory. There is more than one way of fighting. The most potent of all is to _back up the man who does_--except, of course, when his time comes, every man capable of pulling a trigger must pick up his pack and take his place _on the firing line_. Meanwhile it behooves _all of us_ to be ready for the call. [Illustration] [Illustration] CHAPTER VI HALF-BAKED KNOWLEDGE It will take more than a _star shell_ to light up the pathway of a man who clutters his brain with half-baked knowledge. Pitfalls galore are ahead of him no matter which way he may turn. Such people are, by nature, of the cocksure variety, going in where angels fear to tread, and gaining nothing for certain by reason of their experiences. In time they earn the reputation of being _bull-headed_ and sooner or later are on their way downstream without a rudder. Sometimes the strong-willed fellow of fragmentary knowledge isn’t to blame for his affliction. Every little circumstance has something to do with his future course and if he happens to be born “on the wrong side of the moon,” his course is more or less _predestined_. He views things through a film--hazy-like, and inaccurate. To him investigation means nothing. His mind is like a sieve that will not retain the fine particles which must accumulate until a firm foundation forms upon which to bear _a permanent housing for his reasoning powers_. The worst phase of the ever-ready reckoner of uncertain statistics is that he usually circulates among the credulous. Who of us is there that hasn’t at some time in our variegated careers sat across from him at an old-fashioned boarding house _table d’hote_? Even now we can hear him saying, “_My notion of that is this!_” And wasn’t it fun to watch those who drank it all in and gulped it down with their coffee? The green cheese story about the moon would have been swallowed by some of them if our _half-baked know-it-all_ persisted in its truth.