Public Pledge

Like many an old-school newspaperman, George W. Greene, publisher of the Waupun (Wis.) Leader-News, suffered from a familiar occupational disease. His own peculiar symptom was a devotion to what he calls New England boiled dinners (bourbon & water) for breakfast. Now he wanted his 3,127 readers to know that he was a changed man. Wrote he: "This is probably the strangest editorial you ever read. It is the strangest one I ever expect to write.

"Truth is that for the past four rather trying years, with the best intentions, I resorted to stimulants in an effort to do more and better work.

"It didn't work and the final result has been bad.

"Since I seem unable to be moderate, the only answer seems to be to abstain entirely. . . . Any encouragement naturally will be appreciated. . . .

"I've got pride enough and am stubborn enough to feel that any promise made to my readers has got to be carried out. It will be. ... Perhaps this editorial should never have been written, but . . . after all, I've never been too gentle writing about others and there's no reason to spare myself."

By way of encouragement, an elderly reader in Fond du Lac County last week told him she was putting him on her prayer list, and the Congregational minister read the editorial to his Sunday-school class. Two ladies from the W.C.T.U. welcomed him over to their side.

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