FROM DAYS GONE BY June 14, 1918

June 14, 1918.
Around the 1st of the week, within 48 hours, 7 American vessels are now known to have been sunk by German U-Boats off the Atlantic coast from New Jersey and this act has startled the nation. Many seaports have been ordered closed indefinitely, putting a stop to all shipping. The port of Savannah is closed also.
The names of the ships sunk are City of Columbus, Carolina, Edward H. Cole, Jacob B. Haskell, Isabel B. Wiley, Hattie Dunn and Samuel W. Hathaway. It is not known how many were drowned. Our airplanes are now looking over the coast for the destroyers. The crew on one ship was given 10 minutes to leave the ship by the Germans before it was blown up.
Thus Germany brings the submarine warfare right up to the gates of the United States and unless a close patrol is placed over the entire coastline grave fears for further shipping are had. Losing on the western front Germany has struck this blow in the face of America to show us that she is very much alive and to detract attention from the real thorn in her flesh. Foch and his army are fighters.
But our boys are moving abroad. Many are falling in the trenches. Our boys are bleeding their lives away on the battlefields of no man's land. Our husbands and our sweethearts have gone from us to ight our own battles. Our dearest treasures have bid us a sad farewell, and hopes to gaze on their smiling countenances once again are but meager ones. Our friends and neighbors have sent theirs and hundreds of them will never return. It is well to speak of it plainly.
There is no time for slackerism in this country. Yet there are those little, puny, small, pessimistic, tommy-rotted, narrow-minded, knock-kneed, run-down, shallow-minded, yallow-streaked, disgruntled pushllanimouses running around like little fice dogs barking at a bunch of elephants. Shame of the country upon you. A word to the wise is sufficient regarding slackerism and a true admonition to those whose chief delight is to pass their time in idleness and pleasure-seeking is assuredly not out of place along about now.
A storm of protest was heard in Johnson County Monday morning when a W. & T. train came along and carried off 7 carloads of cotton choppers and plow hands from all points along its line to a colored gathering of some kind in Hawkinsville. At this most critical time of making the crop the railroad, induced by what little fare collected and in the very face of the nationwide movement of labor conservation put on this excursion. Hands flocked from the cotton patches, saw mills, and every conceivable employment to "go on de scursion." Information is that a colored man named White at Tennille chartered the train and went up and down the line advertising a baseball game and other attractions at Hawkinsville and they went in flocks. Sixty-five tickets were sold at this point, also from Donovan, Spann and Lovett. Almost a hundred plows in the county were stopped for the day.
The matter was taken up by telegrams to the National Council of Defense and to H. M. Stanley, Commissioner of Labor in Atlanta. Congressman Larson has also been asked to look into this. It has cost our farmers a great deal in loss of labor. It doesn't look like the railroad authorities, if they have their country at heart, would even think about doing such a thing.