The Blot on the Kaiser's 'ScutcheonHillis, Newell Dwight
History
The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon
Hillis, Newell Dwight
World War, 1914-1918 -- Sermons
On Saturday these young men appeared before the draft board and the
Government physicians. All the boys were in a dreadful condition
nervously. Now the heart would drop to forty, and then at the slightest
exertion run up to two hundred and twenty. All were dizzy, nauseated,
yellow and green, feverish. But the Secret Service men knew every detail
of what had taken place, and all the facts were in the hands of the
draft board. A certain farmer's son, young Heinrich H----, was first
examined. The United States physician counted a pulse that varied from
forty to two hundred and twenty. The physician kept his face perfectly
straight. "Marvellous heart! Regular as a clock! Strong as the throbbing
of a locomotive. Seventy-two exactly! Absolutely normal. I congratulate
you, young men, upon your fine heart action. A man is as old as his
heart engine. A boy with a heart like yours ought to live to be a
hundred years old. All you need is a change of climate. France will do
the world for you. You may need a little heart stimulant, but I think
that nothing hastens the pulse beat like a few rifle balls and bomb
shells from Hindenburg." He sent every one of the twenty boys into the
service, but separated them, one going to Camp Ayer, in Massachusetts;
one to Camp Bliss, in El Paso, Texas, and the rest to camps in States
between. In one Middle West community a German father and son went so
far as to deaden pain through cocaine and then cut off the finger of the
right hand. It is generally understood that both the father and son are
now in two widely separated penitentiaries, reflecting each in his own
cell upon the folly of treason and the crime of becoming a traitor to
the kindest and best Government that has ever been organized upon our
earth.
4. "I'm Working Now for Uncle Sam"
The long transatlantic train came to a dead stop at the division station
in that great Southwestern State, where one was surrounded by
sage-brush, the sand, the distant foot-hills and the far-off mountain
range.
One of the Pullman cars showed signs of a hot box, and a moment later
the wheel burst into a mass of flame. In the thirty minutes' wait for
repairs I made my way into the room where the conductors, engineers and
firemen met. On a little table I found a copy of the address given
before the railroad men of El Paso, Texas, by Secretary McAdoo.
I called the attention of the different men to the address, to the
clarity of the reasoning, the simplicity of the argument, the strength
of the appeal and the glowing patriotism that filled all the pages. The
pamphlet had been worn by much reading. It was covered with the black
finger prints of busy men who had been working around the locomotives
and tenders.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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