In telling this, the cadet of '18 insists he is doing no moralizing-just relating something that happened. To him, that is.
Men now in college are conceivably concerned with "putting by" enough to give them a balance on the right side when their time comes; when they "go solo." If they are not, they will be-sooner or later.
That balance will depend, obviously, upon what they have ever developed within themselves to draw upon. All the constructive, negotiable things they have cemented into habit-that will determine the size of the balance.
Those constructive, negotiable things are what they expect to get our of college.
In a supplementary way they can expect to get those things also out of whatever other cultural influences they surround themselves with, meanwhile.
Perhaps as intimate an influence as any-and potentially as decisive-is their daily NEWSPAPER.
The effect of their daily newspaper may be tonic or it may be naroctic--according to whichever need and taste they themselves bring to it. And their reading of a daily newspaper can become tonic and not narcotic in the degree that they read it primarily for news.
News, it almost goes without saying, is the voice, the language, of the world in action. To the men in college who are seeking constructive things they can mentally accumulate, the news offers the best available advance map and chart of those fields where college "cadets" sooner or ready, a convenient exercise for those who wish to keep intellectually "in training." In turn, the news requires a taste and appreciation on the part of its readers. This further constitutes a helpful influences for those to cultivate who would make their "first solo" flights successful.
The man in college is now choosing the daily newspaper he wishes to read for the will be to his advantage to read a newspaper that offers primarily the news. He talking will probably change him.
But if it is such a newspaper he wishes-if he is seeking the one most complete, the one most valuable sources of news information on what the entire-world is doing, saying, thinking every twenty-four hours-if he is concerned with influences that equip him to "fly alone"-he will find supremely what he wants in-