Let the lights burn for the soldier boys on the evening of July 23rd in every rural, village and city school-house in the State! Write or wire that you will volunteer and let us provide you with books and plans.
Yours sincerely,
Cora Wilson Stewart,
President Kentucky Illiteracy Commission.
Frankfort, Ky.
Those who had attended the moonlight schools had always been provided with free books, both as an inducement and as a provision to insure success. Certainly the same generous treatment must be accorded the soldier students.
A campaign for funds was organized, and in keeping with the spirit of the times this was military in form. Eleven men of prominence from the eleven congressional districts in the state were summoned to Louisville to take the lead and the responsibility in the campaign to provide illiterate soldiers with books. Not one refused. Leaving their law offices, the courts, their banks and corporations they came. They became the eleven division commanders, and with their county captains, precinct lieutenants and numerous faithful privates, made the speediest finance campaign on record, and carried their part of the enterprise through with success.
Teachers volunteered faster than we could assign and equip them. Some were out of the state, it being their vacation time, and from their retreats up in the mountains, on the lakes and even from Canada they came hurrying home.
New text-books were written to meet the need and to partake of the spirit of the times. The peaceful lessons on building roads, spraying fruit trees, rotating crops and conserving soil were not for men like these who were putting such things behind them. Theirs must be lessons martial in tone, so some were prepared centering around “men and guns, flags, camps, tents, kaisers and kings.” To make their training as much an inspiration as possible their books and school supplies were given the appearance of war. Their covers were gay in patriotic colors, even the pencils being in red, white and blue. A soldier with his gun was the cover design, and he appeared in all his glory, wreathed about with a border of flags. The Soldier’s First Book and Soldier’s Tablet were the names given to their readers and writing books.
Brave though our countrymen are, there is no question but that many an American boy was hesitant in the early days of the War about going to fight on foreign soil. The first lesson in the Soldier’s First Book had in it a trace of psychology, as well as a content through which men were supposed to master timely words and sentences:
I go.