"What Are You Going to Do to Help the Boys?"
by Charles Hart and Shannon Four
Sheet music courtesy of Lester Levy Sheet Music Collection |
Before, during, and even as the war wound down, the song writers were still harping on the one theme of "hyphenated Americanism." They never seemed to be able to let it go. Even in a liberty bond song of mid-1918, "What are You Going to Do To Help The Boys?" after excusing those too young or too old from fighting, the lyricist demands that "the least that you can do is buy a liberty bond or two," but that was common by that time and would become an everyday occurrence 30 years later. But the writer isn't through—he gets one more gratuitous shot at the grievously maligned hyphenated-Americans when he says "It makes no difference who you are or whence you came or how / Your Uncle Sammy helped you then / And you must help him now." The reference to foreign extraction is unmistakable, but at a time when over 50 percent of the draftee army would have fallen into the hyphenated-Americans niche, the song writers are relentless. "Your brothers will be fighting for your freedom over there / And if you love the Stars and Stripes, / Then you must do your share. /(refrain)." It is hard, here, to con out the position of "brother." Is it brother as in we are all brothers? or is it a song writer reminding the hyphenated-Americans that he has relatives in the A.E.F? The community of races and nations was never a big hit in the U.S., before or during the war, and the latter suggestion, after three years of scathing attacks, would seem to be almost paradoxical in its artlessness.
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